Gary c Tesser

The thread, this latest, is this: (darn, I just wanted to copy the URL, not pull in the animated titles and dancing girls) I'm short of time. I just will say that, in the thread, my response nominally was to Mr Merritt, but it was less to him than to the position he was landing on. (Pace, Mr. or Ms. McCand -- if I have the spelling right )

Let's please adjourn this to the About The Message Board forum. It needs airing, but this is not the place.

Thanks, I was working up to that.

(Was that too portentous, or pretentious? I'm goin' out for Popeye's, anyone in?)

Dr Kantor, be mindful of Mr Brown's remarks (as do all of prudent and circumspect sensibility). As I understand the nature of department chairmanship, your meetings are likely not assemblies of peers, all the members, including the chairman, of equal status; rather, the chairman is The Man In Charge. Is that not so? Do try RONR-IB (usually the hyphen is neglected by college graduates -- you know how it is), as you have been advised, Dr Kantor: it will provide both a refresher, after 20 years, and an up-to-date view of contemporary parliamentary procedure. On the other hand ... So, then, Dr, perhaps you have some educating to do. :-) “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” ― Edmund Burke

I'm looking at page 28, lines 11 - 17 or so, and p. 355, line 33, but I get this wrong every few years. 1. Does p. 298 - 299 help? 2. With general consent, how could it not be so? 3. I would guess so, unless we figure that it's a violation of a rule (I'm failing to come up with which one), in which case we would have to suspend the rules, yes?

Ooo. I'm not sure I agree, but good thinking.

O Greg, alas, I agree with you here: but O Greg, it is you with whom I disagree. O tempora, o mores, Greg, our first quarrel. Yeah, the guy, the dissenter, the contrarian, was impeding headlong progress by, um, wanting something resembling democracy to occur. -- To recognize, unlike the clueless president, that subsidiary motions, like, say, amendments, which he was proposing to introduce, are proper. Democracy takes effort. Thinking takes work. Mindlessness, like groaning in a hall, is a lot more comfortable. I'd chip in for that, but I'm guessing that maybe George thinks, you can't pay me enough.

Yeah, I was going to get to that ; but the computer glaciated, which is why my guest-post is incomplete at a number of places.

These are actually useful points, I think, after mulling about them for a while and only slowly appreciating their subtleties. Nicely done.

I'm guessing that these mean "out of order" and "dead on arrival," with a typo -- am I close?

Ugh, Indeed. And thanks, George, for clearing that up -- the apparent discrepancy has been niggling at the back of my mind for some time (but the back does not deign to consult the front much). And a special thanks to Mr Bennett (btw, I especially liked you in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) for having the acumen to ask about it. I think Dave's follow-up question asks whether the chair should just bring up the motion himself, as with General Orders, or if the member (or any member) must get the floor and make the motion. I myslef don't see the answer to it (I just looked for 20 minutes -- I'm glad it wasn't a snake). __________ N.B. I still haven't seen Pride and Prejudice and Zombies; I'm hoping Dave Bennett has a stellar role, as, he doesn't get a lot to do in the Jane Austen novel,, despite his major and delightful appearance in the first chapter

But Dan, I was trying to ask if you are saying that an imposed limitation, in the bylaws, on their amendment, is binding. The specific example I was looking at was the two (or so, IIRC -- it's 12 o'clock in the morning -- I mean, at the end of the morning, which the government dictates we call 12 PM, which is absurd, because it's unconscionably early to be afternoon, even if it's the beginning* of it, by definition and also actuality) cases in which the US Constitution says that it, itself, may not be changed before 1808. I'm asking again for a logician to weigh in**. ___________ * Please don't give me any of these tiresome arguments that by definition 12 PM is intrinsically part of the afternoon because it's intrinsically part of the afternoon because it's the beginning of it, and the beginning of a thing is intrinsically part of the thing. Piffle. Go back to you commie college-graduate philosophy classes and get back to me when you've subsequently had enough coffee or beer or both. **And I hope it's not too personal to say, I miss conversing with him.

1. Great Glittering Gobbets of Goo (pardon my language, but I am asking in infenetrable, exconsionably refunded by exfuncionalness) : I thought the proposed rule was proposed for the bylaws, so I was asking which bylaws provision would win, in a conflict. 2. But Dan, what do you think it would have taken to have made (or could have made) a valid change, at that time, before 1808? -- 2 (a) ... especially, from the perspective of here , RONR, in the late 20-th century:

Why will it, please? (-- and, tangentially (or perhaps incidentally, I'm not sure which is which), are you saying that that provision in Article 5 of the US Constitution could have been amended before 1808? Or that it couldn't? (Is this more of a logic problem than a parliamentary question?)

Give it time, Dottie, it kinda grows on you. Affectionately. Like kudzu.

Well. that opens a whole new kettle of worms. GPN -- sufficient grounds still, or maybe, not-so-fast?

Rita, c'mon, work with us here.

But debate, to be germane, would (somehow, trickily I think) be restricted to whether the rule should be rescinded, disallowing discussion of allowing smoking. (I think that's true, in theory, but can't imagine how it would work in practice. Great Steaming Cobnuts, I'm never gonna pass that Registered Parliamentarian test.)

Yeah, or maybe strike "except at the annual meeting." But of course then we'll have the constant motions to amend the bylaws to allow the question of smoking. Democracy and free speech. What a tedious drag. Time for a change, think I. But who can step up, ask I : who? (Or better, for college graduates, whom?)

(I mean my right elbow. My left elbow is much more handy (not a pun) because it's separated from my fingers by only a forearm. To which they are both attached. At each end. I saw a picture in Grey's Anatomy. Grey's Anatomy is kind of to anatomy what Robert's Rules is to the common parliamentary law in the USA, and maybe almost as old, but not Newly Revised as often.)

Assuming that the board is not authorized to amend the bylaws, the motion is a nullity, unless I'm badly misled. (I wouldn't call it a "technicality," since it's actually a serious and flagrant violation.) Therefore, at the next meeting, raise a point of order, that the motion was out of order. (If the membership only meets once a year, at this Annual Meeting, then you have a practical problem, if the board generally handles organizing the Annual Meeting, and if the board members are staunchly in favor of dismissing the requirement to hold it. (Hmm. Does that mean the board is willing for the Annual Meetings to be held, but the board realizes that there's actually nothing ever accomplished at the annual meetings, so holding them is a waste of time and money; so that annual meetings should, sensibly, be held only when there's actually something useful and productive to be accomplished at one? In that case, thank the board for its good intentions, forgive them their faux pas, and have the membership -- properly -- amend the bylaws to, sensibly, eliminate that requirement. In which case, maybe also provide for special meetings to be held when necessary, and for them to be called without undue onerousness. If onerousness is a word. I'd look it up, but my fingers are over here on the keyboard, and the dictionary is 'way over there under my elbow.)

(LOL.) Huh! But neither do you or I. We don't even have a fishing boat.

I was preferring TWPIPF. But I suppose RROL is easier to pronounce.

2. I agree with you, Mr or Ms XIV (pronounced the Roumanian way, I suspect from your writing style, I bet; and you're between 18 and 26 years old, do I have it? Not that it matters, but it'd be nice to know how close I am to knowing what I'm talking about, since all authorities agree it should happen with increasing frequency, until it approaches an) on this. But it's a fine point; and it's beside the point.