WatchThe great tragedy is that it is only now after his passing that I realize how much I miss the little guy and his insane rants. Let us all bow our heads and remember the fond times we had with him. Let us remember his sacrifice, which allows us to finally understand why the number 42 is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.
At least we can be consoled that Shrek died doing what he loved best and probably multitasking by posting on patrick.net at the same time.
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Bap33 says
Once again, Bap33, you demonstrate a complete inability to follow even the simplest logical sequence. The statement "I was raised Catholic and taught by viscous Catholic nuns who would beat you with a ruler if you misbehaved" does not imply that I was beaten with a ruler. I could have been one of the boys who did behave after seeing someone else misbehave. We "elitist" can learn from other people's mistakes.
Are you trying to parody the square root of two example conversation?
Bap33 says
INTJs do make great lawyers. However, many of us including myself are repulsed by the field because of all the scumbags in it.
I see you're still sticking with the whole "anti-god" thing. Was my post too long for your attention span? Did you stop reading when I started to use "big words"? Btw, spouting religious crap is more likely to help a lawyer than hurt him in our country. There's an old tale... A criminal standing trial tries to persuade the court to be lenient by claiming "I found Jesus." The judge asks the defendant, "when did you find Jesus?" He replies, "Right after the police found me!" [No one claims to be an atheist to garner sympathy from an American court or jury.]
I will concede that being able to lie convincingly is a trait well exercised by lawyers. Unfortunately, I never did develop that particular talent. As a result, I probably wouldn't make it in a legal, sales, or marketing position, and I certainly will never become a CEO of a major company. The good thing about being an engineer is that I don't have to lie to do my job. I talk to computers all day.
Bap33 says
False humility is not. As an INTJ, I know exactly what fields I'm an expert in and which ones I am not. You touchy-feely types tend to think you're an expert in everything and so you express incorrect ideas in every field. INTJs tend to ask questions in fields in which they are not experts and share knowledge in the fields in which they are. INTJs love sharing knowledge and understanding.
To outsiders, INTJs may appear to project an aura of "definiteness", of self-confidence. This self-confidence, sometimes mistaken for simple arrogance by the less decisive, is actually of a very specific rather than a general nature; its source lies in the specialized knowledge systems that most INTJs start building at an early age. When it comes to their own areas of expertise -- and INTJs can have several -- they will be able to tell you almost immediately whether or not they can help you, and if so, how. INTJs know what they know, and perhaps still more importantly, they know what they don't know.
Others may falsely perceive the INTJ as being rigid and set in their ways. Nothing could be further from the truth, because the INTJ is committed to always finding the objective best strategy to implement their ideas. The INTJ is usually quite open to hearing an alternative way of doing something.
By the way, spelling is not your strong point is it?
Well, I should be nice and thank you for the compliment "you are a great writer", assuming it was meant sincerely. It's the first correct thing you said. So as a peace offering, I'll give you a sincere and valuable piece of advice. The way to become a good writer is to become a good reader.
PersainCAT says
I really wish I could, but when the majority of Republicans believe in torture, I cannot. "A time comes when silence is betrayal." - MLK, Jr.
It's really sad that in the 21st century, we still use medieval justice.
PersainCAT says
Ok, maybe I could phrase that better. Most intelligent people reach the conclusion that religion is crap. There is a strong correlation between atheism and intelligence and between atheism and education. Some highly intelligent are religious even today. I do not understand how. They must compartmentalize like crazy to hold two contradicting beliefs at once. Physics and biology leave no room for a god in nature.
Bellingham Bob says
Luckily INTPs rarely become heart surgeons. Precision is what got us to moon. Precision is what allows us to run a world-wide banking system over the Internet that involves billions of dollars of transactions a second without losing a penny.
Lack of precision causes rovers to crash in to Mars, police to break into the wrong house using a search warrant with an incorrect address (which happens surprising often), the Pentagon to lose $2.3 trillion — that's $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America.
Meanwhile, online banking software handles far more money than that and keeps track of every penny. Precision is necessary for our modern society and economy to function. Aren't you glad that we programmers are precise?
Of course, none of this should be construed as a put down of INTPs. They make great scientists. Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin were INTPs.
thunderlips11 says
Thanks. I'm no Charlie Sheen, but I like to think I have house-cat blood.
leoj707 says
Also, thanks. It's nice to know that some people get what I'm saying. I usually only hear from the ultra-cons.
Patrick says
From Stackoverflow,
The VARCHAR(MAX) type is a replacement for TEXT. The basic difference is that a TEXT type will always store the data in a blob whereas the VARCHAR(MAX) type will attempt to store the data directly in the row unless it exceeds the 8k limitation and at that point it stores it in a blob.
Stackoverflow is great.
Patrick says
True, but my goal is to demonstrate to everyone else that Bap33's position is wrong on many levels. I know that convincing him of the truth is a fool's errand, but the argument may convince others not to go down that path. I'd consider that a victory.
Patrick says
What's a library? Some kind of brickware version of Google?
Bap33 says
The correlation between education and atheism is because science provides answers to questions like where did human beings come from. Those who lack a scientific education often fill the void with mysticism. That's why most religions were started in antiquity. Gods were the only way to explain why things like earthquakes happen. Today we have Plate Tectonic Theory.
PersainCAT says
So I used a personal example to explain my personal view of college. Yeah, that makes no sense.
The point of my statement was that Bap33's assertions of my worldview were incorrect. I was not making the point that college is worthless to all people; that's why I said "my view of college" rather than "college is...". And I conclude with "I don't have a particularly high opinion of college", the keyword being "opinion". Once again, you are taking the things I say out of context.
I could go into more detail about who I think college is beneficial for and who it isn't, but there's no reason to discuss that here. The whole point of bringing up my views on college was to disprove Bap33's assertion of what those views were. If Bap33 claimed that I liked to kick puppies, I'd deny that too. I'm very anti-"kicking puppies".
PersainCAT says
1. No, I'm not arguing that all conservatives use that deceptive tactic. I'm implying that all you ultra-conservatives posting in this thread use that tactic, a case than seems well-supported by this thread. The half-dozen ultra-cons here hardly represent all of the 100 million or so conservatives in our country, although they may represent a lot of them. I'm not going to guess here how many conservatives are ultra-cons. I only hope that it's a minority.
2. Ironically, you have demonstrated the very use of this tactic in refuting the truthfulness of my accusation that you use this tactic. I'd like to make a real-world analogy that demonstrates how ridiculous this is, but I can't think of anything so ludicrous off the top of my head.
3. I have never implied that liberals never use this tactic, although I will go on record as stating it doesn't seem to be their go-to tool like it is for ultra-cons. Note "ultra-cons", not all conservatives.
4. When and if a liberal does use that tactic on someone (myself or anyone else) and I read it, I'll call that liberal out for it. Hell, I've called out people for flawed logic even when they are supporting my position. To me, it's not about being right, it's about being right for the right reasons. The thought process is more important than the actual conclusion.
5. Although left-wing politicians play many of the same political shenanigans as right-wing ones, the left-wing does not have an extremist subgroup that is anyway on par with the right-wing. MSNBC is not a liberal mirror image of Fox News as shown in the post Video demonstrates: Obama is Bush, But MSNBC is not Fox.
MSNBC certainly has a liberal bias, but it doesn't not make up falsehoods and spread them. Something like 50% of Republicans are Birthers! Here and here. This lie was made up on Fox News, and it has been a needless distraction from the real issues like the economy and all the wars we're fighting.
PersainCAT says
Actually, the difference is that Bap33 tries to insult the messenger whereas I insult the message itself as being ridiculous. And then I show precisely why it is. I have no problem leaving the messenger go unscathed as long as he doesn't directly attack others.
leoj707 says
I didn't take being called a copycat as an insult. Sure I joked about it, but that was clearly in jest.
As for being a liar... A liar is someone who deliberately states a falsehood as a truth when he knows it is not. I actually believe everything I'm saying. Sure, you could argue that I'm wrong -- and I may very well be -- although I have yet to read one rational argument to suggest that. However, if you did present a rational case for my conclusions being incorrect, as a cliché of an INTJ my anal retentive mind would force me to correct or abandon my conclusions no matter how emotionally attached to them I am, which is probably not at all.
For example, evolution... It is said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. When Darwin first presented the Theory of Evolution, it was indeed an extraordinary claim. What followed is a hundred and fifty years of extraordinary proof in the form of fossils, footprints, real-time observation of evolution in fast-reproducing microbes, and ultimately genetics. Given all of this, it is now an extraordinary claim that Evolution does NOT explain all of biology. Of course, you could in principle convince me that evolution is wrong, even fatally so. But in order to do so, you need to explain why the plethora of evidence supporting evolution is wrong, and that is not going to be an easy task.
Similarly, you could very well convince me that Einstein was off his rocker when he published the Theory of Relativity. However, you would have to explain why we have observed gravitational lensing and time dilation and why our GPS works far more precisely and accurately with Einstein's equations and not Newton's.
You could even convince me that your god exists. Just have him stop by my place for a cup of tea and a nice chit-chat. He seems to have chit-chatted with mortals a lot during the Bronze Age.
Btw, I can walk on water because I know how to turn it into a non-Newtonian fluid. Does that make me a god, too? I can also fly, but I don't like to because the TSA are a bunch of perverted assholes. Also, my voice can carry clear across the world, but sometimes I get charged for roaming. Now I can't raise people from the dead, but I really should learn to do this. I've just been too busy to take a class in CPR, although that's really not a good excuse.
PersainCAT says
In absolutely no way does the statement "Tea Partiers come from a culture that lynched" imply the conclusion that "MOST Tea Party members WOULD participate in a lynching, nonetheless a lunching." That's just bad math, and I find bad math offensive. Also, I have no problems with the Tea Partiers lunching. I rather enjoy a picnic myself.
The correct conclusion is in my original statement. The culture that led to the lynching of African-Americans continues to drive its people to hateful and xenophobic politics. And this point is well-supported by the whole immigration debate. The Tea Party really doesn't like Mexicans.
Now I don't want to even open the whole can of worms that is immigration reform. That would just drive a further wedge between the left and right here. So let me nip this in the butt before Bapp33 or someone like him starts calling me "pro-illegal immigrant". I am NOT, NOT, NOT, NOT, NOT for high levels of immigration into the U.S. I want the population of the U.S. and the world to stop growing because I fear that the exponential explosion of the population that we are seeing will inevitably lead to a sudden decline, i.e., massive death on a level never before seen in human history, when we quickly run out of various resources. But that's a whole other issue we're not getting into here.
PersainCAT says
See, this is exactly why I hate English and other "natural" languages. You can get away with making statements that wouldn't even compile, nonetheless run without throwing an exception, in a real language like Java or C#. I've read more coherent statements in Perl, the only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
I might have gotten a little too geeky on the last paragraph. My apologies.
leoj707 says
Faith is belief without proof. That's the problem I have with it. Belief without proof is not a good thing, especially when the thing being believed is something arbitrary that you just happened to be born into, and especially when that belief has been the basis for many wars and murders throughout history.
It is wrong to believe in anything that cannot in principle be proven because truth and provability are logically equivalent. I'm not even going to try to show why this is true because it is way over the level of logic that people would follow here. The logic that I've presented so far has been relatively easy stuff. The truth equals provability discussions get into Alan Turing and Kurt Gödel territory, and that is some really hard shit. I mean, these are people who make me look dumb. I'm smart enough to understand their work, but not smart enough to teach it.
PersainCAT says
I may be good at writing, but I'm not that good. If I were, I'd make a lot of money writing Pulitzer Prize winning novels. I'm simply not talented enough in writing to pull that off.
Bap33 says
This is not logic. This is an assertion. Logic, whether correct or flawed, is a sequence of statements following a cause and effect pattern. A implies B, B implies C, therefore A implies C. There are actual rules of logic that are well known and can be easily looked up. But all logic is going to involve at least two statements. That's what logic does. It combines two statements known to be true by some rule known to be correct and results in a new statement known to be correct. Clearly an assertion, even if it were true, would not meet this description. I really don't understand why you are struggling with this concept. Did you hate your math classes growing up?
leoj707 says
You should apologize to Bap33 for hitting his response with words that have more than 6 letters.
Ok, that was a direct insult. My bad, but I couldn't resist.
Dan8267 says
This thread started out being about Shrek and ended up demonstrating the fundamental differences between the left and right wings. Now I didn't really want to bring out the big guns, because doing so is probably going to upset some people, but I see no way to resolve this thread other than to be painfully honest. [Yes, until now, I've been going easy on the ultra-cons.]
The fundamental difference between the left-wing and the far-right-wing (and no, I don't including all conservatives in that, just the extreme ones) is that the left-wing uses logic, facts, and empirical verification to determine whether or not something works, whereas the far-right-wing uses faith, emotions, and cultural beliefs. One side uses science, the other uses tradition. Science advances and constantly refines itself as it is a self-correcting mechanism. Tradition does not do either.
And although none of us wants to admit this, the fundamental difference is due to biological differences between the ultra-right-wing and the rest of humanity. You see, the ultra-right-wingers have a different brain than the rest of us. This has been scientifically proven.
MRI study suggests liberal brains understand complexity, conservative minds are associated with anxiety and fear:
Using data from MRI scans, researchers at the University College London found that self-described liberals have a larger anterior cingulate cortex–a gray matter of the brain associated with understanding complexity. Meanwhile, self-described conservatives are more likely to have a larger amygdala, an almond-shaped area that is associated with fear and anxiety.
Study: Conservatives have larger ‘fear center’ in brain:
A study at University College London in the UK has found that conservatives' brains have larger amygdalas than the brains of liberals. Amygdalas are responsible for fear and other "primitive" emotions. At the same time, conservatives' brains were also found to have a smaller anterior cingulate -- the part of the brain responsible for courage and optimism.
If the study is confirmed, it could give us the first medical explanation for why conservatives tend to be more receptive to threats of terrorism, for example, than liberals. And it may help to explain why conservatives like to plan based on the worst-case scenario, while liberals tend towards rosier outlooks.
In summary, ultra-right-wingers are dumb cowards. There is no politically correct way to express this truth. We can explain why this is so, and we can try to help those people get over this defect, but only if those people want our help.
It makes sense that some people with have larger fear centers. It was an evolutionary advantage back in the Stone Age. It kept people from being eaten by lions and bitten by poisonous snakes. But we don't live in the Stone Age anymore. Those disproportional instinctive fears are now manifested as irrational fears about terrorism, Mexicans, gays, and other such conservative issues.
Having fear is a good thing. It's nature's way of making sure you don't do something stupid that gets you killed. However, in the modern world, a person must use frontal lobe thinking to distinguish rational fears from irrational ones. The fact is you are far more likely to be killed in an automobile accident than by a terrorist. You should fear Toyota more than Al Qaeda. But you don't because your Cro-Magnon 1.0 brain was evolved to deal with hunter-gather living and hostile neighboring tribes rather than the reality of modern living.
The good news is that you can override your base instincts with higher-level thinking. The bad news is that you have to want to.
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I miss shrek. Dueling with shrek was like shooting rabbits with a cannon. Almost too easy. Now I will have to engage with people who are smarter (that would be almost anyone) and where I actually have to think first.
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Bap33 says
Wow, I have never seen such an unsophisticated and child-like attempt at manipulating people into thinking someone else has done something wrong. I can only image what went through your head when you wrote this post:
Man, I can't think of anything to counter Dan's arguments. He's just too good. If only I could get the community to turn against him. Hey, wait. Did Patrick just ban someone for being "hateful". Yeah, that's the ticket. I'll start a rumor that Dan is posting hateful messages. People will just read my message and be too lazy to read Dan's, so you'll be sure to conclude I'm right. Maybe even Patrick will ban him. Goodie, goodie, goodie!.
Seriously, your lame attempt to accuse me of hate speech is the conversational equivalent of a four-year-old throwing a tantrum when he doesn't get his way. And in case you haven't notice, I'm pretty good at spotting bullshit, calling people out on the bullshit, and explaining exactly why it's bullshit.
And quite frankly, if you ultra-cons can't get along with me, one of the most fiscally conservative people on this site, what chance to you have of getting along with everyone else?
Bap33 says
This is another fine example of juvenile tactics. You deliberately misinterpret my statement to mean the exact opposite of what it does. This is the debating equivalent of Pee Wee Herman saying, "I know you are, but what am I." The problem with juvenile tactics is that they only work on juveniles. Most of the people on patrick.net are adults, and adults don't fall for such infantile displays because the adult thinking process is more sophisticated.
Seriously, Bap33, if you want to make a counter-point to any of my arguments, it would be far more productive to come up with a coherent idea backed by rational analysis and reputable references. Simply sticking out your tongue and saying "nah, nah, nah" doesn't work. I would be glad to debate you on any issue, if only you would say something intelligent.
As for me being "anti-god", that's ridiculous. I've made it well-known that I'm an atheist. I firmly believe, no, make that know that no god, as defined by any of the monotheistic or polytheistic religions in human history exists. Your god is a fictional character. As such I can no more be anti-god than you can be anti-Spiderman. What I am against is irrationality and the persistent and dangerous use of mysticism. And the reason I am against these things is that they have been causing death, destruction, and suffering throughout human history. And if you want examples of this, then watch Carl Sagan's Cosmos. It's on YouTube and is free.
As for me being "anti-conservative", I guess if your definition of "conservative" is "bat-shit crazy" then yes, I'm anti-conservative. I have seen little evidence from your postings or Shrek's that conservative means anything other than the delusional and persistent pursuit of failed philosophies, economic models, and ideas in face of overwhelming evidence that such pursuits inevitably end in further failure.
Of course, I don't think that conservative has to mean believing the Earth is 6000 years old and that Jesus would work for Goldman Sachs if given the chance. As I've said before in these forums, I think Eisenhower was a great president and I'd vote for him. I'd also would vote for Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, and Theodore Roosevelt (all Republicans).
The fact that in my lifetime the Republican party has fallen from every merit it ever had is the fault of the very extremists I have shown to be full of hatred and bigotry. It is those extremists who have redefined "conservative" in such a way that no rational human being could support it. Those extremists have forced out every clear minded Republican, or as they say "Rino", from the party, and in doing so have also made us independents recoil in shock. You are simply killing your own party.
ahasuerus99 says
If I'm reading this correctly, you are saying that Boston is more racist than Alabama. Are you by any chance also a Slider like Tenouncetrout? Perhaps one where the south won the Civil War?
You're talking about Boston, right? The city with a Dunkin Donuts on every street corner. The city where the police can't tell the difference between a light-bright and a bomb. The city that's overflowing with MIT nerds dressed in Storm Trooper uniforms performing a musical (ok, maybe that's Cambridge)? That Boston? And you're saying that Boston is more racist than the South?
I don't know where the picture of the lynching I linked to was taken, but I know it wasn't Boston. In fact, I'm pretty sure it wasn't anywhere in New England.
ahasuerus99 says
Actually Patrick compared how conservatives hear liberal arguments to how dogs hear what humans say: they don't understand the language, but they perceive the tone.
Of course, comparing conservatives to dogs would be unfair. Dogs love unconditionally and bring joy to the world.
Also related to Patrick's point… There was a time when conservatives were intelligent and highly educated. Eisenhower was a very intelligent man. Unfortunately, he was the last Republican president with an I.Q. over 80, and this is precisely because today the Republican Party looks down on intelligence, education, science, and math. Republicans believe that thinking is "elitist". They even use the word "elite" as code for bad.
Bap33 says
You "feel" that I told a fairy tale? You need to stop feeling and start thinking. Thinking works better. It's more accurate, especially when it comes to facts. This is exactly what Colbert meant when he coined the term "truthiness", something that feels like it's the truth or that I wish to be the truth even though thinking doesn't support that. Use the frontal lobe part of your brain, not the reptilian core. Oh, Christ. You're not going to understand that because it is an evolutionary reference.
Bap33 says
Exact match, eh? Well then, it should be easy for you to provide an example or two.
You see, when I disprove someone's incorrect assertion, I do so by giving a specific reason or counter-example. For example, when Tenouncetrout tried to make the point that the Obama as a witchdoctor picture I posted was never used by any Tea Party protester by saying
The OP posts that race baiting pic, then claims people are marching around holding signs with that pic. Well where's the picture of the tea party rally members holding the sign with that pic?
I simply posted a picture of a Tea Party protester holding up that exact sign. See, my counter-example clearly showed that the specific conjecture Tenouncetrout had just made was empirically wrong. That's how you prove a point. It's actually quite easy to do when you have the truth on your side. I suppose it's harder when you're just making shit up, but I've never tried that.
[Note to self… Hmmm. Proving the world is round: easy. Proving the world is flat: much harder. Then again, if I just repeat "The world is flat" over and over again, all the viewers of Fox News will believe it.]
Bap33 says
> I grew up super religous
1. I did not grow up super-religious. I was raised Catholic. That does not mean super-religious.
> nuns beat me,
2. The nuns did not beat me. I said the nuns were strict and exercised full control over the behavior of the kids. You're misreading again.
> I got smarter by going to college
3. People are supposed to get smarter by going to college. That's kind of the point of college. However, my view of college is that it's nearly worthless. I learned a lot during college, but not from college. I taught myself how to program and was far more skilled in software development than any college professor before I ended my freshman year of high school.
So, actually, I don't have a particularly high opinion of college. It's a tax to get into the workforce (something I've written before on this site) and a sheepskin. A college degree and an education are two entirely different things.
Of course, if you would just start listening to people instead of forcing your prejudicial stereotypes on them than perhaps you would not have falsely assumed that I think college is great. However, your statement does lead me to believe that you did not attend college and given how low the standard for getting into college is nowadays (basically you just need a pulse), that does say something about your intellect.
> smart people know religion is crap
4. Yes, smart people do know that religion is crap.
People with higher IQs are less likely to believe in God, according to a new study
More intelligent people are statistically significantly more likely to exhibit social values and religious and political preferences that are novel to the human species in evolutionary history. Specifically, liberalism and atheism, and for men (but not women), preference for sexual exclusivity correlate with higher intelligence, a new study finds.
People who say they are "not at all religious" have about 6 IQ points more than those you say they are "very religious" and those who claim they are "very liberal" have an average of 12 IQ points over those who claim they are "very conservative". (Social Psychology Quarterly, Satoshi Kanazawa, evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science) [Sorry, but occasionally I read print, too. Not everything is on the Internet.]
Professor Lynn, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Ulster University, said many more members of the “intellectual elite” considered themselves atheists than the national average. A decline in religious observance over the last century was directly linked to a rise in average intelligence, he claimed.
atheists, being a moderate proportion of the USA population (about 8-16%) are disproportionately less in the prison populations (0.21%).
1997 Federal Bureau of Prisons Statistics reports prison population to be
o Catholic 29267 39.164%
o Protestant 26162 35.008%
o Muslim 5435 7.273%
o American Indian 2408 3.222%
o Nation 1734 2.320%
o Rasta 1485 1.987%
o Jewish 1325 1.773%
o Church of Christ 1303 1.744%
o Pentecostal 1093 1.463%
o Moorish 1066 1.426%
o Buddhist 882 1.180%
o Jehovah Witness 665 0.890%
o Adventist 621 0.831%
o Orthodox 375 0.502%
o Mormon 298 0.399%
o Scientology 190 0.254%
o Atheist 156 0.209%
o Hindu 119 0.159%
o Santeria 117 0.157%
o Sikh 14 0.019%
o Bahai 9 0.012%
o Krishna 7 0.009%
"If all atheists left the USA it would lose 93% of the National Academy of Sciences but less than a quarter of 1% of the prison population." (Reddit)
I could go on and on, but I think I've made my point.
> America sucks
5. America does not suck. About one third of Americans suck because they believe in things like torture. Luckily, the intelligent, rational people in America keep the Internet running and nuclear reactors from melting down.
Again, you like other ultra-cons here have consistently tried to force words down other people's throats. Since you cannot address the arguments we actually made, you try to trick people into thinking we made weaker and dumber arguments. This not only shows disrespect for the person you are debating, but it also shows disrespect for all the readers as you are implying they are stupid enough to fall for such an obvious ruse.
> smoking dope is great
6. I have never smoked dope or cigarettes in my life. Nor do I have any desire to. At this point you are just being "libel" as lawyers would say. To make me out to be a druggie with no reason, nonetheless evidence, is just a stupid, stupid thing to do. It's so easy to call you out on this bullshit. I have an extremely non-addictive personality type. Oh, and I hate to break this to you, but many red necks smoke pot and Rush Limbaugh is a druggie hooked on Oxycontin.
> my parents were right wing
7. My parents most certainly are not right-wing. They consistently vote Democrat. In my father's words, "In this country, you vote for the lesser of the two evils." Hardly praise for the Democratic Party, but since they are consistently the lesser of the two evils, what does it say about the Republicans?
So not only do you not get anything right about me, you also fail to guess at my parent's political stances.
> I'm not a lefty -- I'm an independant
8. Republicans, too embarrassed of their own party, are more likely to call themselves independents. I call myself an independent because I haven't registered under either party. I did consider registering as a Republican just so I could vote for Ron Paul in the primaries -- Florida is a closed primary state, so you have to be a member of a party to vote in its primaries -- but I'm glad I didn't because in Florida they just throw, er misplace, the boxes containing votes for Ron Paul.
Not that I agree with everything Ron Paul believes, but I do like the fact that he is honest, upholds the Constitution, and is for smaller government. Yep, that makes me a liberal. Smaller government is what liberal Democrats are always asking for. [Note to ultra-cons: that was sarcasm.]
Of course, the Republicans today don't want smaller government either. The Bush/Cheney administration proved that.
> all conservatives are racist bigot homophobe teabagger bastards!
It was I who said, "Now I don't know what percentage of Republicans are racist. I suspect it's a minority, but the ones that are racist are the most vocal. They are the Tea Party members holding up signs like this…"
However, many of your (Bap33's) comments are making think I might have been wrong when I said that. Perhaps leoj707 was right. You're certainly providing ammo for leoj707. But then again, maybe you're a leftist plant trying to make the right look like a bunch of idiots. [That was also sarcasm, maybe.]
So basically, Bap33, every single assertion you made in the quoted block above was completely off base. With aim that bad, you should sign up for the Nicks!
[Note to sports fans: I actually don't know if the Nicks suck or not. I was just referencing a joke from the game Deus Ex. Don't get upset if you’re a Nicks fan. I may not be a pot-smoker like Bap33 claims, but I am a smart ass. And I like to use humor to break up the monotony of logical arguments and make them more fun to read. Although the ultra-cons seem incapable of distinguishing the gags from the real arguments, so maybe I shouldn't.]
Bap33 says
Lack of originality? Geeze, and I thought some of my jokes were funny. Ok, maybe the Sliders reference was a bit out-of-date and nerdy, but did you read my witty reply to Tenouncetrout's claim that Biden, Obama, and Pelosi run the Senate? Doesn't that count as original?
I mean, it's one thing to call me a pot-smoking pussy that gets beat up by old nuns, but to say I steal my jokes. That was uncalled for.
> Dan can and shall be called a copy-cat liar for his fable.
Um, could you quote the source I'm copying and provide a link?
Btw, there's nothing wrong with copying something in a quote and referencing it, if that's what you're referring to. That's called evidence. It's generally considered a good thing because it shows your not pulling things out of your ass.
Bap33 says
No. Showing what I copied would be "more detailed enough". And yes, I am making fun of your grammar. Just because you're writing on the Internet doesn't mean you should write like a 12-year-old girl texting her friends about Twilight. Ok, maybe I'm being a bit of a "Grammar Nazi", but slopping writing is evidence of slopping thinking.
Bap33 says
Oh, geeze. Ok, let me start by admitting that I was wrong about something. When Obama was running for the Democratic nomination for president, I thought the press would make a needlessly big deal that Obama might become our first black president. I figured the press would milk this up not realizing that the whole civil rights stuff was settled back in the 1960s and no one gave a damn about race anymore. Hell no one even thought about race anymore. I thought that if elected, Obama being the first black president would be a minor footnote in history of little concern to a population with much more pressing issues like a devastated economy, multiple wars, the loss of Habeas Corpus, and so much more.
It turns out that I was completely wrong. As soon as Obama got the presidential nomination, all the racists came out of the woodwork. I thought that perhaps some old people who grew up in the 1930s would still be prejudice, but most of the racists where middle age or even young Americans. Some of them were even in their twenties. This shocked me.
How could it be that any 20-something-year-old would compare Obama to a monkey or tell him to go back to Kenya? WTF? This is the 21st century, right?
It's not the Democrats, the liberals, or the progressives that were calling Obama a monkey. It was wackos from West Virginia and central Pennsylvania. The same people who held up signs saying "keep your government hands off my Medicare". In other words, stupid hicks. The fact that there were so many of them blew my mind. It's like they've been silent since the 1960s and have been breeding like crazy.
So I was wrong when I thought America had moved passed racial bigotry. But the bigots are not in the Democratic Party. They are not liberals. And they certainly are not progressives.
Btw, to insulate that progressives are bad is just plain evil. Progressives are the ones who got rid of child slave labor and unsafe working conditions. They got us the 40-hour work week -- in the 19th century people had to work "turns" or 36-hour shifts in dangerous factories -- and paid time off. Progressives are the reason the middle class came into existence in the 20th century. Before that there were only the poor and the rich, something that the Republicans want to return to. We owe a lot to progressives.
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Ok, I've address most of the incorrect stuff posted by the ultra-cons. I skipped over some stuff that I thought was handled by others before me. My posting is already pretty big (9 pages so far), so I don't want to go on much further. I'll end with an anecdote that explains where these ultra-cons are going wrong with their communications.
Let's say someone asks a simple, non-controversial question like "Is the square root of two rational?". Being a bit of a math dude, I'd likely respond with something like this:
The square root of two is an irrational number as shown by the following proof…
1. Let (a / b)^2 = 2 where a, b are integers, b is not zero, and a and b are relatively prime. a / b is a rational number by definition.
2. (a / b)^2 = a^2 / b^2
3. Therefore combining #1 and #2 yields a^2 / b^2 = 2.
4. a^2 = 2b^2
5. Since 2b^2 must be even, a^2 must be even.
6. Since a^2 is even, so must a be even since an even perfect square can only have an even root. I.e. a^2 = 2c for some integer c.
7. (2c)^2 = 2b^2
8. 4c^2 = 2b^2
9. 2c^2 = b^2
10. Since 2c^2 must be even, so must b^2 be even.
11. Since b^2 is even, so must b be even.
12. We've concluded that both a and b are even, but this means they are not relatively prime. Therefore, we have violated our conditional premise stated in #1. Ergo, proof by contradiction, the square root of two is irrational.
Now, in a normal discussion, that would be it. Maybe someone would have a question about the proof or didn't understand a step. But when an ultra-con reads this post, he'll reply something like…
OH My God you are so stupid. Sorry, but you're just being full of shit. You say that the square root of two is irrational, but you use the number all the time. So that means you are irrational, too! You're such a hypocrite.
And then you say if a number squared is even than so is the number but three squared isn't even. FAIL!
And dummy, don't you know that a and b aren't even numbers. They're letters! EPIC FAIL!
And you even admit in step 12 that you contradict yourself. Do you even read your own post, moron!
Hey Dan, how does it feel to have your ass handed back to you? Pawned!
So now it's 6:30 in the morning and I haven't gotten any sleep because I've been refuting ridiculous, unfounded, and ill-thought arguments from ultra-cons that sound like the one above. Oh, it's going to be a fun day at work getting the Python and Javascript to live together nicely in the same database record. Thanks a lot for keeping me up.
Hey ultra-cons, if you're going to make any more arguments, can you at least go through the minimum level of effort of having a sane human being read your words before you post them. And if they don't pass the laugh test, don't post them. I don't mind spending the time correcting an incorrect, but reasonable position. It's a learning experience for everyone. But I'm beginning to think it's a waste of time refuting all the ridiculous ones.
What you ultra-cons need to understand, is that people like me (INTJ rationalists) do not form opinions quickly. We argue every possible issue for and against a position before we decide. We relentlessly attack our own ideas with mathematical precision because we believe any idea worth having can withstand any such attack. We put considerable time and computational power into making sure our philosophies are without even the slightest flaw. Given all that, it is unlikely you will be able to find a fault with our logic unless you are highly intelligent and spend countless hours looking for one. For we are highly intelligent and have spent countless hours looking for faults in our beliefs.
And if by some miracle, you happen to find a flaw in our logic and demonstrate it, we are grateful for that correction for it allows us to perfect our worldview and gain greater understanding of the universe. However, we do not tolerate fools well. Finding faults where there are none because of incorrect facts, bad logic, or the complete lack of logic annoys us. It wastes our time, and it pollutes the knowledge space causing less adept minds to accept erroneous information and reasoning. This in turn diminishes our species and slows down progress. And that is why we spend time chlorinating the pools of knowledge.
God, I hope Patrick is using a varchar(max) for these posts.
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Dan8267 says
Dear sir, do you have a gentleman consort? You had me at Teddy Roosevelt.
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Somehow I never imagined shrek as a masturbating teen. The image I had was more like coach McGuirk meets Michael Savage.
Oh, well RIP, I am sure he is in a better place ranting against the theocratic regime in the sky.
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leoj707 says
I never imaged shrek as Brazilian, but nature is full of surprises.
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Funny I always pictured "Ernie Pantuso" when thinking of Shrek:
RIP "Coach"
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Vicente says
I always pictured Shrek as a furby reprogrammed by the GOP to spread lies about Obama.
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If only there'd been someone to help revive him, but alas... they're all union and were on their break. What an obummer for the sherk.
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Actually, I got one too many complaints about Shrek so I've deleted him for now.
But I'm sure he'll be back in some incarnation.
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Several times I got people telling me they avoid the forum because of Shrekgrinch.
The previously stated rule is "Insults to groups are discouraged but tolerated, if there is some thoughtful criticism of the group's ideas or actions."
This comment today, for example, lacked thoughtful criticism:
I don't mind that a few times, but it just got to be too repetitive. Like many times every day.
"For now" means he could re-register. So he's not really banned.
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Patrick says
You have been a very tolerant man.
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I hope I'm not being too much of a jerk.
Here's Shrek's use of "Obambi" for a few days last week:
| 2011-09-12 10:03:10 |
| 2011-09-12 10:07:15 |
| 2011-09-12 18:26:25 |
| 2011-09-13 17:18:41 |
| 2011-09-14 19:51:28 |
| 2011-09-14 22:23:17 |
| 2011-09-14 22:26:22 |
| 2011-09-15 18:34:20 |
| 2011-09-15 18:36:20 |
| 2011-09-15 18:46:30 |
| 2011-09-16 10:52:46 |
| 2011-09-16 11:02:15 |
| 2011-09-16 11:38:23 |
| 2011-09-16 13:23:59 |
| 2011-09-16 14:49:54 |
| 2011-09-16 14:59:01 |
It's like a broken record.
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Birther refers to people who believe a specific thing that isn't true, and it describes what they believe.
Right-winger is an accurate discription of people on the right wing.
Obambi just radiates irrational hatred for Obama without reference to anything specific that he's done.
I suppose Obammunist does have a bit of descriptive meaning to it, but Obama is not even remotely communist. Some minor tweaks to health care and taxation are a far cry from actual communism.
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Using birther does imply hatred for, well, birthers. What else could you call them?
Teabagger is definitely out of bounds for polite company.
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what's in a name?
A rose, by any other name, is still a rose.
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Patrick says
Tinfoil-hatted Shrek also believed that Osama Bin Laden wasn't killed when the administration said so. This was stated more than once, and conspiracy theories were stated (e.g. died several years ago of kidney problems, for example).
This "I'm not a birther, I just asked for the birth certificate, said it was suspicious that he refused to provide it, questioned the documents that were provided, still engage in various tinfoil-hatted conspiracies about the birth certificate, I wanted a law to be passed requiring disclosure although I stated such a law was moot after Obama provided it, but I never actually stated that he was born on foreign soil even though I consistently questioned it" thing is just a smokescreen. This thread makes it quite obvious: http://patrick.net/forum/?p=618795
It's like those politicians that say: "I have no reason to think that Obama was born outside the US, but I have not seen any proof." Come on.
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MarsAttacks! says
That thread pretty much sums up why shrek was viewed as a birther even though he claimed to not be a birther.
What do you think Mars? Before the release of the long form was there any credible documented proof that Obama was born in the US? Shrek did not believe that there was.
MarsAttacks! says
What do you think Mars? Do you think Ben Laden is dead? Do you think that the account of him being killed by the SEALs was true?
MarsAttacks! says
From what I read that is not what is being said at all. Only specific theories, that are highly dubious, are being refereed to as "tinfoil-hatted". Not all distrust in politicians.
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Patrick says
Can you do a similar chart for "libruhl"? -- in its idiotic Nixonian sense of course, not its real meaning.
leoj707 says
Yes, exactly -- that seemed pretty obvious from my statement. And while we're talking about definitions, this is exactly like how birther really refers to people who question whether Obama was born in the US in any form. Mars/Shrek is just messing with definitions, but not really defending the substantive argument.
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Confusing...
Patrick says
Ok, so Shrek has been given a time out? Did this start in a different thread?
Shrekgrinch says
Now Shrek has annouced his retirement... as Shrek...
MarsAttacks! says
But is already back incarnated as MarsAttacks!?
What else did I miss?