LATOC Lexicon...

[OldHorseman]

   Lordy, this thing got out of hand real fast...  I might just have the start of my next book goin' here!


   Got too big for a board posting, so CLICK HERE for the lexicon...

   You can just close the new window to get back here, or follow the link at the bottom of the lexicon page.

[OldHorseman]

   Wow... I can't believe it let me post the whole thing as one message!

[GrumpyPops]

Great!!!  Love it 

OH:
I suggest that you add "Plastic pumpkins" to your lexicon and I'll delete it and "Turnips" from my list of acronyms.
Like your definition of "Turnip" much better.

[JurisDoctorOfDoom]

OH,

that was some high hilarity there, I"m going to post it on LATOC and send it out to my email list.

My favs were "turnips", captain planet, and uberdoomers.

[Anasazi]

Oh wow! That's great.
What? Is it raining down south there and you can't get out to muck the stalls?
How do you have so much time on your hands to post gems such as these and work the farm at the same time?
This contradiction is seriously screwing with my concept of hard farm labor in the future.
Must be the force multiplier of concubines in action.

[OldHorseman]

How do you have so much time on your hands to post gems such as these and work the farm at the same time?

   In the Summertime in Dixie, you have to take breathers during the day, or you'll die of heat stroke...  Besides, this sort of thing doesn't take me that long.  I've done a lot of it in the past.

[Ulerian]

What a great list! To borrow one of GP's acronyms, it got me ROFLMFAO. 

What the LATOC-ers call "Fedghettos" I always called "Jonestowns". To me, living in one of those places would be just like drinking the fabled Kool-Aid...only not as fast.

[OldHorseman]

   Okay... Need to add Plastic Pumkin and McMansion.  First draft always misses some obvious ones.

= = = = =

   There. Added 'em along with Great Leader...  Also put some glue on this thread and GP's Acronym thread.

[houseoftang]

Very nice, but a couple of points of fine-tuning. 

First, my idea of "concubine" is quite literally a junior wife (this coming from having read the word in the Christian Bible more often than anywhere else).  Screwing around with a guy's concubine was punishable in the same way that screwing with his wife was; but a concubine wasn't as "free" to leave (as though any women in those days were at all!) and didn't have as many rights.

Your definition of suburbia seems to fail the test for Fairfield County, CT.  Granted, it's a very grey definition.  While Fairfield County draws the major bucks out from New York City (and perhaps that's part of your definition of "what's needed"), most everything a Fairfield County dweller like myself needs is within cycling distance (well, MY cycling distance  including some local farms (though not many).  Perhaps this actually proves the validity of your definition rather than the opposite; I just sense that a better definition is out there somewhere.  I'll let you know if I manage to figure it out, but let me know if you figure it out before I do.

Purple pills are red pills, by your definition.  A red pill seems to be a person who not only has become aware of the implications of PO, but is unable to go back to the previous way of thinking that the Cornucopian Age will somehow continue.  That's also more in line with the meaning of the term from The Matrix .

[OldHorseman]

First, my idea of "concubine" is quite literally a junior wife (this coming from having read the word in the Christian Bible more often than anywhere else).

   The role/definition of the concubine varies a good bit in different traditions...  Even within the Bible, which itself represents a span of centuries and a range of cultural influences.  Sometimes the concubine is actually considered a servant of the wife, rather than the husband.  Sometimes she is precluded from full wife status by rank/class/economic status.  Sometimes she is essentially a junior wife.  Sometimes just a sex-slave.

   Until the collapse of civil authority, she cannot literally be a junior wife, as having two wives at the same time is illegal.

Your definition of suburbia seems to fail the test for Fairfield County, CT.  Granted, it's a very grey definition.  While Fairfield County draws the major bucks out from New York City (and perhaps that's part of your definition of "what's needed"), most everything a Fairfield County dweller like myself needs is within cycling distance (well, MY cycling distance  including some local farms (though not many).  Perhaps this actually proves the validity of your definition rather than the opposite; I just sense that a better definition is out there somewhere.  I'll let you know if I manage to figure it out, but let me know if you figure it out before I do.

   If ordinary people could reasonably live where you are without an automobile (or someone driving on your behalf), you're really in a "walkable" villiage or small town.  Perhaps the flaw is that I didn't exclude marathon bikers.  The idea is that, if your 'neighborhood' is automobile dependent, and couldn't have existed in 1920, it's Suburbia.

Purple pills are red pills, by your definition.  A red pill seems to be a person who not only has become aware of the implications of PO, but is unable to go back to the previous way of thinking that the Cornucopian Age will somehow continue.  That's also more in line with the meaning of the term from The Matrix .

   Most Redpills in the Matrix accept the reality and deal with it.  Purples would be people who, having swallowed the red pill, can't deal with it, and try desperately to go back to being Bluepills.  (Red and Blue mixed is Purple.)  The ultimate Purple in the Matrix was that guy who killed half the team trying to sell out to the Agents to get back his Bluepill status in the first movie.

   I thought we needed a word to describe the people who know about Peak Oil, but are desperately wriggling away from the consequences.

[houseoftang]

Redpill:  A person who has become aware of Peak Oil and its implications.  Term borrowed from the MATRIX motion pictures.

Purplepill (or just Purple):  A person who has become aware of Peak Oil and its implications, but is mentally and emotionally unable to accept the reality.  Usually grasps desperately at the hope of a Magic Bullet, Great Leader, Slow Crash, or World Enlightenment to allow them to believe Cornucopia will go on.  Extrapolated from the Blue/Redpills of the MATRIX motion pictures.

My problem is that according to your definition of a Red, a Red who decides to bury his or her head in the sand is actually both a Red and a Purple.  Your definition of a Red doesn't include any action, only awareness, but that same awareness is necessary to be a Purple.  I think you need to have some sort of action, or at least an altered mental state, that goes along with being a Red.  I agree that Cypher is the quintessential Purple (remember the line where he says "I know what you're thinkin'.  'If only I'd taken the BLUE pill!'"?), and that's my point; according to your definition, because Cypher realized the true nature of things, (the only criteria for being a redpill), he was a Red, and because he turned back and tried to forget about that knowledge, he was also a purple.  Contrast that with, say, Neo, who had the same realization about the true nature of reality, but proactively tried to change the system rather than attempting to return to it (the true spirit of a redpill).  I still hold that your definition needs tweaking as I originally suggested.

   If ordinary people could reasonably live where you are without an automobile (or someone driving on your behalf), you're really in a "walkable" villiage or small town.  Perhaps the flaw is that I didn't exclude marathon bikers.  The idea is that, if your 'neighborhood' is automobile dependent, and couldn't have existed in 1920, it's Suburbia.

What about all the towns (like my area) where people actually DID live in the 1920's, when industry was still located here and provided most of the jobs, rather than the big businesses in NYC which draw paper-pushers from around here nowadays?  Sure, the houses were smaller and farther apart, but the population density hasn't changed by orders of magnitude (it's only tripled since 1920), nor has the actual structure of the towns.  I think a lot of communities are in the same boat, and what to call them?  Rural it's not; urban doesn't fit.  That's what the term "suburban" was coined to be, no?  A catch-all for the communities that didn't fit the classic "rural" and "urban" labels.  I think there's a difference between suburbia and suburban sprawl, too, the latter of which is really what your definition of "suburbia" is about. 

Good definitions can be so difficult sometimes.  A lot of philosophers gave up on the idea of being able to define things, you know.  Freakin' amateurs.  A good definition is out there somewhere and we'll figure it out.

[OldHorseman]

My problem is that according to your definition of a Red, a Red who decides to bury his or her head in the sand is actually both a Red and a Purple.

   He's a Red trying desperately to be Blue, thus Purple...  We're not bound that tightly to the Matrix analogy.  Unlike the Matrix pills which you either take or don't, it is possible to take PART of the Peak Oil "red pill", then go into denial and wolf down the "blue pill" as well.  (Note that the terminology was used loosely in the Matrix to begin with.  They referred to anyone unaware of the Matrix as a "bluepill", even though most of them had never been offered the choice of pills, and had never actually taken the blue pill.)

   Read through the Forum postings and Purples are easy enough to spot.  They know about the general concept of Peak Oil and the Oil Crash. Maybe they've even read the main pages of the LATOC site.  But, defying all reason, they still steadfastly believe nothing really bad is going to happen.

   So yes, Purples are Redpills of a sort.  The red pill just didn't quite "take" in their cases... Or they don't ingest the whole thing.

What about all the towns (like my area) where people actually DID live in the 1920's, when industry was still located here and provided most of the jobs, rather than the big businesses in NYC which draw paper-pushers from around here nowadays?  Sure, the houses were smaller and farther apart, but the population density hasn't changed by orders of magnitude (it's only tripled since 1920), nor has the actual structure of the towns.  I think a lot of communities are in the same boat, and what to call them?  Rural it's not; urban doesn't fit.

   Sounds like a villiage or small town to me...  With at least some potential to return to its original form when the Big City types are drawn into the Fedghetto.

  That's what the term "suburban" was coined to be, no?  A catch-all for the communities that didn't fit the classic "rural" and "urban" labels.  I think there's a difference between suburbia and suburban sprawl, too, the latter of which is really what your definition of "suburbia" is about. 

   
   We're splitting some pretty fine hairs here now...  There have always been small towns that benefitted from being near larger cities, going back to ancient Rome and before.  Modern Suburbia arose as part of the automotive era.  The ability to easily travel tens of miles to work, shop, go to church, etc. is what enabled the creation of Suburbia.  Before cars, there were cities, small towns, and various forms of farms.  There were neighborhoods out on the edge of town which might have been considered "sub-urban", but that wasn't really the same thing as Suburbia.

   Some of the old small towns got swallowed up by spreading Suburbia.  Whether their core nature will survive and re-emerge remains to be seen in each case.

   Sprawl is actually a fundmental feature of Suburbia...  The outer edge has to constantly move out as the inner ring transitions to full-urban, as it inevitably does.  Folks are constantly using their cars to "escape" the mean city streets, but they don't want to leave behind the paved roads, street lights, etc.

[houseoftang]

Sounds like a villiage or small town to me...  With at least some potential to return to its original form when the Big City types are drawn into the Fedghetto.

Maybe this area is just a strange anomaly.  There's some pretty big stuff around here.  My hometown of Fairfield has the headquarters for GE, among other industrial stuff (Exide battery used to be there, too, but the factory is shut down).  Yet the real estate value is pricey like you wouldn't believe ($400k for a knock-down on a quarter acre, easily, with the capacity to build a million dollar house on that property).  Sikorsky is just up the road a couple towns. 

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree; we don't seem to even be addressing the other's points, and there's no sense going on about it.  I'll say that I'm not fully impressed by all your definitions, and think you oughtn't to try philosophy as a way of making a living (because even I can't do it).   

[Michelle]

What about drinking the koolaide? GREAT list Hoss.

[SabreKai]

Outstanding!

Well done OH, I love it. You sir, are an excellent wordsmith.

Sabre