Today we have to judge whether any of our contestants have met their immunity challenge. The challenge was this:
The challenge for the seven surviving candidates is to write a short comment, 200 words or less, that reveals that they actually understand why their attitudes and pattern of expression have so exasperated readers here, and explains what they will do to change their behavior in the future. This will be a tough one for this crowd, I’m sure. Let’s see if they can wake up enough to do some honest self-assessment.
The purpose of this challenge isn’t to force people to change or defend their ideas, of course, but to see whether they can honestly recognize why other people might find them so irritating that they are asking me to ban them. So your job in the comments here is to tell me who you think did the best job of actually being briefly self-aware.
Here are the attempts:
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Africangenesis, who explains that far left progressives don’t like being shown to be shallow, destructive, and vindictive by someone who is more comfortable with himself.
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John Kwok apologizes for name-dropping and talking about his high school…and then tells us that he should be talking about it. And then he tells us about his high school again and
again and
again and
again and
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Pete Rooke talks at length about beliefs. You tell me if he makes it, because I couldn’t read it all without nodding off.
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Facilis has one that I missed first time through.
Vote for who you think meets the immunity challenge. Considering the quality of the entries, “None” is also a legitimate vote.
JeffreyD:
You knew Dorothy Parker?!!! That explains the rejoinders.
For what it’s worth, AfricanGenesis, I like you, and I completely agree with your assessment of the predicament you find yourself in now. People use your statements as a means to wedge open the thread and derail it to argue with you, and if you don’t say anything they simply propagate their lies about libertarianism unabated. There’s no way to win. Speak up, and you’re called a thread-jacking troll (and subject to removal from the blog by mob rule), remain silent and they’ll just keep repeating whatever lies best suit their instinctive need to insulate themselves from any facts whatsoever that don’t confirm their world view.
I’ve not been back to this blog in a long time, and seeing what has recently taken place here in recent days confirms my decision to remove Pharyngula from my RSS reader. The rare science article found here is simply not worth subjecting myself to what passes for “reasoning” from the far left. If I wanted a sermon, I’d go to church. At least they wear funny costumes when they put on a show.
The only reason I stopped by here today is that same reason I might pause to examine roadkill. It’s a fascinating look at internal anatomy I may otherwise never see up close, but at the same time I am revolted at observing a decaying corpse covered in its own excrement.
far left : anyone who dares to speak up against libertarian demagogy and dogma
Ward, don’t forget to defriend PZ on Facebook too.
E.V. at #502, well Dorothy (Dot) and I were lovers, but she stopped talking to me after she lost a fight to Jean Harlow over me. Plus, she never forgave me for teaching both Fred Astaire and Nureyev our secret dance routines. Ah, I miss them all. Did I mention we all went to day care together?
Ciao and good night.
hey, pass one of those rejoinders over here, man
Bye, Ward. Don’t forget to forget to write.
I would if you’d stop bogartin’ it. * deep toke* …’ere…
Bye, Ward. Can you take Kwok and AG with you?
PLEEEESE keep John Kwok; his posts are hilarious!!!
He didn’t meet the challenge, though. Nor did Rooke or AG. Facilis did promise to change his behavior somewhat, but his post doesn’t seem to show that he understands why his behavior ticks off (to put it nicely) the Pharyngulites. So, I’d have to say: None.
I’d be pleased if Ward Denker would actually leave.
But I predict he will show himself a liar. He’ll be back.
I’d be happy for him to prove his honor and stay gone, though. I’d love to be wrong.
When a respected commentator like Ward tells us that we are all far-lefties and that we spend our term sermonising, I do shed a tear.
Please Ward – don’t leave us!
Your name was synonymous with…so many good anagrams with “wanker” in them..and…and…
Need I go on?
You know, I personally find that I am stupider since he left.
*sniffle*
#472.
Holy crap. There is no end to this, is there?
Shut
the
FUCK
up
about
your
goddamn
high school!!
We don’t care!! It’s a good school! So what? Yale is a good school, too! Bush went there! So what? I didn’t go to Stuyvesant! So what? So fucking what?
Please talk about something more interesting!! What color socks are you wearing? Whole wheat or white? What brand of toilet paper do you use? Do you have a girlfriend/boyfriend? Did (s)he fall for you because you’re a Sty Alumni? Do your parents introduce you as, “Our son, John, who went to Stuyvesant,”?? ANYTHING but your ceaseless pontifications about a school you graduated from years and years ago!
No we won’t.
For me it is this:
Apparently he was even more direct on Amazon.com.
There’s no way to win.
Nope. And that might have something to do with you being FUCKING WRONG all the time.
Oh dear, we will miss you so!
***** SELF-PLAGIARISM ALERT *****
John “Should-Have-Home-Schooled” Kwok has repeatedly copied text *from his earlier posts* as if it had not been said before! Worse than ‘normal’ plagiarism – plagiarism of your own posts is only learned in the *very* best NYC High Schools!
I guess I would give immunity to the political prisoner, AG. More because I feel that, if I commented more, I would be on the block, myself. Cockgagger and Nerd of Dickhead, as well as others, have pretty much asked for my banning in the past. It shows a pretty intolerant attitude to those who don’t accept their emotional view of economics. While I don’t hold most of the views that they have associated the L word, I feel I must defend small l ideals, however imperfect. I prefer to bitch and moan about the lack of science in the world. As much as I would like to limit my comments to those topics, I feel like I am being personally attacked by the intolerant, and I can’t let it go. I mean really, L’s are considered rabidly right wing to you people. That is more ignorant than I am. I realize this is the kind of thing that would get me on the list, if someone actually read what I typed, but, I refuse to shut up. I would prefer to not see anyone banned. I like to see the completely irrational ideas that get posted. I like it even more when 20 people show how irrational the post is. If you get rid of the “creotards” and “libtards” and reduce this site to an echo chamber than Pharyngula would lose a lot of the appeal that drove me and thousands of others to read it every day. So, ban who you must. Just don’t get so full of yourselves that you make this site boring.
Holy crap, Kwok is banging on about his famous college buddies at facebook, too!
Not sure if this link will work, but it’s in a recent PZ status update.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=13937490&ref=mf#/profile.php?id=13937490&v=feed&story_fbid=71761513392
John Kwok gave Dempski shivers down his spine? lol. Does anyone have a link to this?
Many of them are. Africangenesis certainly qualifies.
That’s impossible. Nobody could be more ignorant than you.
For what it is worth, fatherdaddy, the vast majority of Libertarians I have seen show up here are not interested in supporting the “small l” ideas. They are, instead, of the sort that defend the “big L” ones, then refuse to see why those ideas don’t work most of the time, or why. They are the equivalent of all the jokers on the “financial news” who not only failed to predict the current situation, they actually helped create it, by suggesting that deregulating things that make no fracking sense to deregulate, was a good thing. Case in point, deregulation of FCC controlled bandwidth = good, it allows people to invent new technologies, and make money from them, while deregulation of loan systems, which **must** remain stable, and which **do not** add anything to tangible, other than fake money, into the mix = BAD.
Why? If you need to ask, you don’t get it. But, lets put it this way, one is a barrier to a small number of very talented people that “have the means” to invent something with it. The later, is not a barrier to the majority of people that could invent anything in the first place. All it really does is drop money in the laps of **huge** numbers of people that spend 95% of their money buying donuts, than they ever spend inventing “anything”. So.., a ten fold increase, lets say, in a **real thing**, versus a 10 fold increase in something that only exists on paper…
The problem isn’t belief in deregulation, its the fact that nearly **all** Libertarians that show up here say, “Less government is a good thing.” Not, “Its a good thing most of the time.”, “Its a good thing when their involvement just creates problems.”, but, “Less government is **always** a good thing.” No qualifiers, no clear perspective on the difference between what promotes actual progress, and what just promotes making more money. They often “equate” the two. And, that has been the whole fracking problem all along. More money is **not** the same as progress. Someone that spends every dime they have, to build something that will feed them for the rest of their life, is still *making progress*. Someone that makes 50 times as much money as they need to feed themselves has, 50 times as much money. If some disaster happens and they can’t spend any of it, they have made **no progress at all**, in fact, they just lost absolutely everything.
There are a few that show up here that seem to be aware of the distinction, but even then, they often seem to fail to grasp why, just possibly, what ever it is they are defending, seems to fall in the “I have 50 times as much toilet paper”, and not, “I have enough to feed myself forever.”
In fact, its similar to a joke I see come up, “Give a man a fish, he will eat for a day, teach him to fish, he will feed himself for a lifetime, but teach him to deregulate the fishing industry, and everyone starves to death.” If you plan to kick the rule book out, you better be damn sure that the result will be beneficial, and not just “lucrative”. And, too many of them are so tied up in the idea of “small government”, they seem to be total idiots when figure out which is which.
Sigh.. Really wish some days that this sights posting system included “edit” as an option. Managed to make a few goofs there, due to losing track of what I was trying to finish. Guess I need some sleep. lol
You’re a contributor to comments on a blog, and you have to ask that question?
Kagehi,
I don’t believe that less government is a panacea for all that is bad in the world. I personally benefit from several government programs, health care for my children being one of them. However, the problem comes with deciding what is to be free and what is to be regulated and to what degree. While deregulation of the bandwidth was good, some believe it just threw more money into the telecommunication industries pockets and is therefore bad. Regulation of the food production in this country has been said to aid farmers and hurt the poor and hungry through rules regarding size and aesthetic quality of what may be sold. The question of regulation is more complex than people are willing to admit and I favor caution when it comes to regulation. The deregulation of the banks has caused problems, to say the least. I wonder how many of these problems could be “fixed” with more agressive investigation and prosecution of fraud. Not being an economist I don’t have a firm grasp of these things, but, could the deregulated money supply have contributed to the innovations of the telecommunications revolution by providing the creative and intelligent people with the cash to start production of their new technologies? I don’t see the regulators as having a huge logical advantage over the deregulators, and vice versa. Being someone who was raised to believe that freedom is very important, I naturally tend to be willing to take the risks of more deregulation.
Are the devout Libertarians any more dogmatic than the devout Socialists on this site? I don’t think so. Just smaller in number and less popular. I think too many associate all libertarians with the Republicans, and even most Libertarians and Objectivists think the Republicans, and their cronies, are just as economically corrupt as you do, just from a different perspective.
As for the 50 rolls of toilet paper, somebody got a job because someone wanted that toilet paper, and now that person can feed their family. I have a job because people want something that is completely unnecessary for survival. I am more than willing to feed and shelter my family with their excess cash. The person with more money than they know what to do with is at the very least putting that money in the bank, Bill Gates isn’t stuffing that money under his bed. Now that bank has more money to loan to you for your house, or to loan to Apple to make the iPod I have, or to loan the fisherman enough money to buy a new boat and more selective nets.
TUT, #488
60% isn’t most people?
Longstreet, #492
How deep was the cyst? How much effort was needed to remove it?
Name Drop #1: I knew Gary Gygax. Even worked with him on the DJ system, and got paid for it. It was fun while it lasted.
Name Drop #2: For some dang reason author Tad Williams enjoys seeing me again every time we meet. He’s never told me why.
Not really a name drop, because Sergio Aragones is friendly to everybody he meets. That’s just the way Sergio is.
That’s my glory hounding for this thread.
My confession:
I want people to claim that they know/knew me.
fatherdaddy squealed:
I’m assuming that by ‘Cockgagger’ you’re referring to me; would you care to cite the post/thread where I’ve called for you to be banned? I’m pretty sparing when it comes to banning people, so I’d like to know exactly what it was you did to provoke such a reaction from me, if indeed that is the case. Your handle doesn’t instantly evoke revulsion so it this did happen it was a while back.
But since you use the term ‘cockgagger’ to be insulting I’m going to guess it was homophobia, and if that’s so then I’ll call for you to be banned every time you turn up and paste your ignorant hate-filled blather amongst people who don’t tolerate such pathetic behaviour.
Fatherdaddy, (I’m presuming I’m Nerd of Dickhead) there is no need to feel threatened simply because you have libertarian sympathies. In some areas (some social policies), I do too. AG was only “attacked” because 1) he repeatedly hijacked threads to promote his political vision, 2) repeated himself ad nauseum while doing so, and 3) would not acknowledge refutation when his ass was handed to him on a platter, which happened often. If you stick to political and open threads, and avoid hijacking threads, you will be welcomed as an independent voice. Have fun, and express yourself.
By the way, the Redhead, who is ultrafeminine in some respects, would skewer you with several knitting needles for you calling her a dickhead. Maybe you need to back off a couple of notches on your language (see Wowbagger above) unless you want to find yourself at the bottom of a “dog pile”.
Nerd, do you remember anywhere else this particular character has appeared?
I had a bit of a search through the old posts and the only dialogue I could find between myself and fatherdaddy was in this link where Eric Atkinson went on a homophobic violence bender and I was amongst the many tearing him a new one because of it; fatherdaddy showed up a little after this and defended him.
Nowhere in that post did I call for fatherdaddy to be banned; I did, however, call for Eric Atkinson to be banned – which makes me wonder if fatherdaddy is Eric Atkinson and was sockpuppeting to make it appear as if someone was defending him.
Feel free to correct me, fatherdaddy – oh, and please cite the post and thread where I called for you to be banned. If it is true then I’d like to see the context.