Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey",
originally identified by
philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
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Notes -
The first time I read LOTR was just before the movies came out, and I read Fellowship whilst in the hospital with chest pains. Reading a story of four friends on a cross-country adventure was a real comfort at the time.
(I had been trying to impress a friend by swallowing air to burp, but one painful gulp never yielded a belch. Within an hour I had chest pains. I had torn a tiny hole in my esophagus and the air was in my interstitial chest cavity, nearly collapsed a lung.)
I had seen the Rankin-Bass Return of the King and The Hobbit, so I knew how it ended but not how it began. It wasn’t until around 2008 when I saw Ralph Bakshi’s LOTR, which was just Fellowship and Two Towers.
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