Today, we have to assess whether any of our contestants have met the immunity challenge. Very few have tried; I'm afraid this is very much like Monty Python's Upper Class Twit of the Year contest, in which the competitors are lucky to stumble onto the field at all. Here are all the attempts to answer this question:
In a comment that isn't longer than about 200 words, that is grammatically correct and logically coherent, and that does not cite the Bible or other religious authorities (and does not rely on tales about who you went to high school with, or tortured analogies involving necrophiliac pedophilic milkmen), explain how evolutionary biologists resolve the trivial conundrum represented by the common question, "If evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?" Remember, answer as a biologist or intelligent layman would, not like Pat Robertson or Ken Ham.
First, there is an entry from Barb. However, even if we didn't see the sarcasm dripping from it, a check of the email address reveals that it actually isn't from Barb. Disqualified!
Next up: John Kwok takes a stab at it, and gives a somewhat pompous but correct answer. His reply is notable for two things, however. It is accompanied by possibly the most empty threat I have ever heard — "PZ - If I am bounced off Pharyngula, then you may find yourself losing some friends over at Facebook." — which immediately prompted a surge of voting to throw Kwok out. Then there is the fact that I specifically said there should be no talk of high school acquaintances, yet Kwok managed to squeeze in mentions of Abbie Smith, Ken Miller, his high school creative writing teacher, and the wife of his high school creative writing teacher. It is truly a marvel, and a beautiful example of exactly how he got on this list in the first place. The oblivious violation of the rules, however, means he must be disqualified.
Finally, Facilis. In an utterly stunning upset, he actually managed to turn out a brief, accurate, two-sentence explanation. The audience was stunned. The judge was frantically checking IP addresses and the validity of the entry, so miraculous was this short, and probably very temporary, flare-up of cogency. It stands, however. This twit has actually managed to complete the first section of the course!
If we'd had a few more entries, I would have opened the discussion up to judge who won. However, since we only have one standing entry, I must officially declare that Facilis is the winner of the immunity challenge. Shock! Horror! Drama!
Now, since I did have to close the previous thread, you can continue voting in this one. Do me a favor, though, and if you change your vote, please clearly say who you are retracting your vote from, and who you are now giving it to…this one may drive me insane trying to tally.
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If we are playing that....I'd say religious fundamentalism and paedophilia - they are often one and the same.
Think you're really righteous, think you're pure in heart?
Well I know I'm a million times as humble as thou art!
My famous friends are even less arrogant and concieted than John's are.
@ Dustin # 496 -
That's the funniest thing I've read from you in weeks.
Wish I knew some "A - List" celebrities too. Only one I've met in years was the actor who played the baseball pitcher in "Bull Durham", at an art gallery opening at Long Island City's PS 1 Contemporary Arts Center a few years back, and we spent ten minutes comparing our favorite high school English teachers (He's a fellow alumnus of my high school.). His teacher strongly encouraged his acting career, and he still remembers that. I often hear how he visits the school now to coach promising acting talent.
And posting on a blog is “professional work” how exactly?
BTW, John, you can still be a narcissist even if you laugh at yourself. In fact, narcissists will use any tactic in the book to refocus attention to themselves when it has shifted to others. It's kind of a narcissistic thing to like being the center of attention, you see. The metamessage of the "I'm being silly" thing is "Look at/pay attention to ME!"
Not least of all because I haven't written anything in weeks. Asshat.
Watchman wrote:
Erasmus: I'm not in favor of banning Kwok, but if you review the past two Survivor threads you will see that the name-dropping is only the tip of the liceberg.
Exactly. I'm for banning him because he's a shameless liar. As even a cursory review of the Panda's Thumb thread shows.
@ Woo Woozy -
When I post somewhere at, for example, US News and World Report, to comment about the so-called "evolution vs. creation" debate, I am mindful as to whether I could be misconstrued as "narcissistic" (I am mentioning US News since someone posted a link to some of my posts last night here at this very discussion thread.).
As for being "narcissistic", I think some of the most obvious examples have been a few of your fellow posters here at Pharyngula (Excellent example is the person I've been having a "dialogue" with just now. Guess he likes reading his criticisms of me, since he's been posting frequently about them.)
Dictionary - conceited - 3 entries.
1.a. - Endowed with fancy or imagination.
2.a. - Entertaining a flattering opinion of one's self; vain.
3.a. - Curiously contrived or designed; fanciful.
?
@ Dustin -
Guess you like the sound of your words. Right? If you haven't been posting for weeks, you are certainly making up for lost time now.
Herr Kvok, I am verry zorry to haff to tell you ziss, zince ve vere bowss gradzuates ov zee same prestigious high school. But you are showing zee classic signs of bowss projection and transference! It eez in fact your own self-importance zat you are seeing in me.
Perhaps you vould like to tell me about your mozher?
John,
Your name-dropping doesn't impress. I'm more interested in what you have to say and how effectively you can support it with evidence than I am in where you said it, who you are, or who you might or might not know.
Stuy is a good high school, and Brown a good university, but even poor or marginal students come out of each of them. There's no guarantee of a quality education at either.
As for whether other members of Pharyngula might/might not be narcissistic, what has that to do with whether you are? Brush up on your logical fallacies, friend.
John Kwok, we're very busy, and none of us can be bothered to punch you at the moment. Having collectively extended our clenched fists, we thank you for so kindly and repeatedly running towards them as fast as you can.[/Blackadder]
@ Woo Woozy -
I agree completely with these observations of yours:
"Your name-dropping doesn't impress. I'm more interested in what you have to say and how effectively you can support it with evidence than I am in where you said it, who you are, or who you might or might not know.
Stuy is a good high school, and Brown a good university, but even poor or marginal students come out of each of them. There's no guarantee of a quality education at either."
Except to note that both Stuy and Brown are great schools, period. I've known my share of academic disasters from both.
Suggest you read my extensive comments at US News and at Amazon. I spend a lot more time discussing content than I do in "name dropping".
nar⋅cis⋅sism
/ˈnɑrsəˌsɪzɛm/ [nahr-suh-siz-em]
–noun
1. inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity.
2. Psychoanalysis. erotic gratification derived from admiration of one's own physical or mental attributes, being a normal condition at the infantile level of personality development.
Janine & Patricia:
*grin*
Heh. Of course I do. It was just a wisecrack, and an obscure allusion to a time-honored suggestion one encounters in 12-step programs: Try to avoid getting into romantic relationships in your first year. (Keep it simple, and all that.)
I am also an alumnus of Brown University, where I knew John Kwok very well. How fondly I recall the many, many exorcisms we performed there together. Trust me, you doubters, he knew all the best people.
According to the DSM-IV-TR, a patient must exhibit five or more of the following traits in order to be diagnosed with NPD [Narcissistic Personality Disorder]:
*grandiose sense of self-importance
*preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
*belief that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
*need for excessive admiration
*sense of entitlement
*takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
*lacks empathy
*often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
*shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes
Ok. *fires up Google, types "John Kwok US News"*
Oh, loookeee here. These are the first three posts I found:
and:
and:
You are pathologically incapable of not dropping names.
My outstretched fist is really starting to hurt.
Switch hands.
It's no good. I've got better things to do with my time - and those kittens just won't drown themselves
@ Feynmaniac --
Thank you for reposting the DSM criteria for NPD. I saw you've done this a few times before.
@ Dr. Freud --
On target.
@ John Kwok
If you agree that name dropping doesn't enhance the credibility of your posted opinions, for what reason are you doing it?
But of so much more importance is your behaviour here and now.
Bonko-the-baby-killing-mime may also do good work for charity, but it doesn't make him the ideal man to entertain your children. If you increased the information content of your posts here, whilst simultaneously drecreasing the level of self-reference and name-dropping, then you'd probably get a better reception.
As it is, after a few hundred posts devoted to discussing your foibles, you're still turning up to try to convince everyone of what a great and worthy guy you are. The alternative would have been to point out how little any of this matters, and to keep you head down and mouth shut for a while.
No, it's probably not an achievement -- probably it's a case of severe Asperger's. I sometimes have trouble figuring out how people will react to what I'll say; he seems to be completely incapable of figuring it out, and thus often does exactly the opposite of what would be constructive. For example, he makes that pathetic Facebook threat, people laugh at how pathetic it is, and he repeats the Facebook threat!
Because staying amused at a one-trick pony is difficult after a few days.
And the good man is a one-trick pony. He has never had anything constructive to offer, not even a teachable moment (Barb provides 5 to 15 teachable moments in each of her comments).
Oh, and then there's the literally insane fear that Obama (who is a scoundrel and deserves to be crucified) might be a Leninist and therefore might have to be assassinated. Read this thread and the previous one. It will boggle your mind.
Really, he's nothing but annoying. Away with him. I hope he seeks professional help.
That's actually unlikely for most regulars. I mean… find me in Google Scholar… :-|
You're making an argument from ignorance here.
None of your "famous friends" post on this blog, you pathologically-point-missing tosser, you!
I've compared Barb to Dolores Umbridge, now brace yourself.
You're the Gilderoy Lockheart of Pharyngula.
I've examined the evidence provided and although I'm too new to really have a feel for which of these wonderful contestants is the most disruptive and most deserving of the banhammer I've taken the trouble to delurk so I'd better cast a vote.
Barb. Without a doubt, the most evil one of the bunch.
Since Barb has been quiet since Survivor started, I may have to change my vote to John after all...
The name-dropping is even more annoying and obnoxious to someone like me (a foreigner) who so far hasn't recognized a single name of those supposedly "famous" friends or the schools he attended. And why someone has to mention his high school in every post is beyond me, especially since it's been THIRTY years since he went there.
Sorry, gotta go, the phone is ringing. It's the secretary of a nobel prize winning professor who teaches at the University I work at. So what if she just wants to order a journal article in his name? I've seen him in the cafeteria, I've repeatedly talked to his secretary, I've received several emails from him, I guess that makes him my acquaintance.
Oh, and Einstein taught here eons ago. Man, do I feel special now. And I'm sure it adds to MY intelligence and credibility.
Heliobates WINS!!!!
In fairness to Bonko he killed those babies out of self-defense.
I think a fair reading of this thread, or any others I've been involved on, is that it is not the libertarians, but the libertarian bashers that hijack the threads, and they've tried to do it again here, by posting misinformation.
"The "libertarians'" most favoured economic guru appears to be von Mises, who explicitly rejected the use of empirical, historical evidence to test his ideas." -- Knockgoats
von Mises was oriented towards constructing his economics from axioms, but it is a rare libertarian that has read him anymore. Even though von Hayek is from the same Austrian school, his contributions to the science cannot be characterized in this way, nor can those of Chicagoans, such as Milton Friedman and todays libertarians are far mor likely to be familiar with them than with von Mises, if they are economically literate at all.
"there is a gross inconsistency between their devotion to property rights, and the contempt most of them demonstrate for the grievances of those whose ancestors were robbed, enslaved or killed in order to build the USA ... When the inconsistency is pointed out, unfounded accusations of racism are the favoured response, rather than addressing the inconsistency in any rational way." -- Knockgoats
This should be easy to understand. Libertarians believe in PERSONAL responsibility. INTERGENERATIONAL "responsibility" just like the godbot intergenerational "sin" of the old testament is racism. You think the US should have intergenerational wars like the balkans and the middle east, I don't.
"most of them are, despite their protestations to the contrary, fervent American nationalists ... some, like Africangenesis, being neocon-apologists" -- Knockgoats
You evidently can't understand simple distinctions or balance evidence. Libertarians favor global free trade and oppose nationalistic protectionism. What you call neocon apology, is merely pointing out the liberal hypocrisy of deamonizing Bush while lionizing FDR and Wilson who had far worse civil rights records. Bush the liberal "education president", took out a genocidal dictator, and engaged in nation building, nursing a new fledgely democracy. You think Saddam's sovereignty should have been respected, I think it was unworthy of respect. You think the insurgency and sectarian violence was justified, for the life of me, I can't see such actions as justified. You think Bush is responsible for the actions of the insurgency, the sectarian extremists and al Qaeda in Iraq, and I think that those who engaged in the actions are PERSONALLY responsible. You are the defender of intergenerational conflict and nationalism. You can't criticise Bush's liberal policies, so you try to daemonize him as a liar. I just point out some historical perspective, and admit that although I disagree with much that he has done, that I admire his simple honest principled stands.
"If you can look at what deregulation over the past decade and a half has done to the US and world economy and still favor economic libertarianism" -- Stu
Why do you make oversimplified and misleading statements about a complex nonlinear system that you have no hope of justifying. It is as easy to point to government distortions of the market, and an inherently unstable leveraged system of money creation as it is to "deregulation" that was just peripheral to the problem.
"As a libertarian commenter with no intent to troll or otherwise disrupt the blog with irrelevant economic theory" -- Speedwell
I'm here for the science, I just correct some gratuitious libertarian bashing, and some arrogant progressivism along the way. Have you ever contributed to the science discussions, you may have, I just don't recall it on the threads I've participated in.
"Quite frankly I'm glad there were no Libertarians was on that list. If there were the Libertarians would come together, organize and come to the aid of their brother. The irony of that would be lost on them." -- Feymaniac and Chomsky dupe
Which came first the libertarians or the bashing? Dawkins pointed out why so many collectives use filial and father language in association with in-group and out-group distinctions.
Modern humans aren't on a par with social insects, and an effective population size of 10000 may be small, but it isn't a relatedness coefficient of 0.75 yet. That will take a few more genocides and stalinist purges, then the state may be able to fade away and the anarchists will be in heaven with their near clones. All except for Knockgoats, the non-propertarian statist.
"I just wanted to mention that idiots like africangenesis who don't understand what liberty is for (hint: "the pursuit of happiness" ring a bell?) and argue the most sterile, robotic caricature of the school of thought possible just embarrass me." -- Speedwell
There's Feynamanic's filial devotion and solidarity for you. Speedwell, if you weren't such a dupe of collectivist thinking, MY actions couldn't embarrass YOU. Hmmm "the pursuit of happiness", does ring a bell, but it is rather lacking in detail, and is not a definition of "liberty" since it could encompass Saddam's rape rooms. The "non-coercion principle" is a little more meaningful don't you think?
This list is a little short of libertarian bashers, perhaps Knockgoats or Tis'Himself should be added. Have they ever contributed to a discussion of science?
Jeez go away for a couple of hours and all the fun happens....
@ Patricia.OM and Janine,
thanks for the encouragement Ladies, I hope I don't have to do the mincing, flouncing,strutting and twirling all at once - it could get quite messy.
@ Watchman
Brazen hussy I can do quite well, so you're going to have to shorten that year to perhaps a day?
@ John Kwok
"
If you are whom you claim to be, please identify yourself by your maiden last name and your occupation. And if you are that person, do you know now who Rick Moody is (I only ask because if you are that person, you seemed absolutely clueless when I had mentioned his work.)?"
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Fuck me, John, have you never heard of the phrase "taking the mickey"? I was rolling on the floor when Frank McCourt and his "wife" voted for you. Man, you need to get out more, you've lost your sense of humour somewhere along the line. Your request for that poster to identify themselves is going have me laughing for days.
Dustin "posing" as Freud @511
Sorry, I just couldn't picture Freud, the only thing that poppeed into my head was Herr Flick from 'Allo 'Allo - damn, my sides are sore from laughing!!!!!
Very true. It was mime that I found unforgivable...
I hear that UK tabloid newspapers are currently campaigning for the government to release the names and current addresses of all mimes, living statues, Punch and Judy men, and other street performers. It is a good idea on paper; I think everyone would like to be able to protect the vulnerable - children, the elderly, and people of tatse. However, I'm worried that in practice it may just lead to vigilantism.
I hear that UK tabloid newspapers are currently campaigning for the government to release the names and current addresses of all mimes,
Are there no scorpion pits?
Thanks to the magic of YouTube, I now know who Herr Flick is. Sadly, I remind me of Herr Flick.
He wrote, as he grabbed the wheel of the thread, forcing it to turn down Me-street, rather than Everybody-else Avenue...
Yawn, a libertard defending themselves from nothing. That means they should be in the next round for plonking consideration.
Oh man, I'd quite forgotten about them
I wish the government would start to persecute those fuckers. Waaaaay too undertaxed IMNSFHO.
Yet another occasional poster comes out of the woodwork to vote...
Barb.
Narrowminded self-righteous homophobes will win this sort of contest every time.
Although His Kwokishness is really doing his best to get people to vote for him, isn't he? Here's a free hint, Mr. Kwok: people aren't actually supposed to WANT to win this contest. Maybe one of your famous friends should explain that to you.
I went to high school with a woman who's done quite well with her singing career, but she didn't tell me to write this.
Here’s another sample from John Kwok’s Amazon forum postings just before all his comments were removed.
“Mendacious Scumbag Marley,
Hope you enjoy your membership in the Obama Youth Corps. Heil the Messiah!
Heil Obama!
In stark contrast to the Messiah, Governor Palin comes across more as a Saint Joan of Arc than the creo moron you've tried so hard to depict.
Live Long and Prosper (as an Obama IDiot Borg drone)”
Here's an unusual response that followed just six weeks later - when John sent me an email via Facebook...
John sent you a message.
--------------------
Subject: Am supporting Obama now
Stephen,
I may be that rarity of rarities. A McCain/Palin supporter who accepts evolution as valid science. Had I known Obama would have made the Cabinet picks and policies he's making, I would have voted for him, NOT McCain. BTW, two of his key advisors, Holder and Axelrod are fellow alums of my high school.
Before we resume any friendly relations here and at Amazon, I would like an apology from you for mounting a "hate campaign" against me that's as vicious as any I've seen from Bill Dembski. No one from NCSE questioned my political beliefs in any form to what I witnessed from you. Moreover, I want you to ask your Amazon.com friends to vote yea on my reviews ASAP.
Respectfully yours,
John
Nuff said! John should be booted ASAP
Ahh, yes. I forgot about that quirk -- when you disagree with John on anything, he accuses you of being an IDist.
In all fairness, there is truth to that statement. For instance, the aforementioned "Open thread for anything but Libertarianism" had several people denigrating the ideology before the Libertarians came out to defend it. And the regulars do allow a greater level of strawman argument against some Libertarians than they would tolerate regarding any other lines of argument.
For the former, it's not like that is always the case. But it does happen from time to time. And for the latter, it's something I've noticed on most left-leaning blogs, not just Pharyngula. Just an observation from a lurker and occasional poster.
OK, I withdraw my previous remarks and apologize for them. I can now understand why everyone is so pissed off. Kwok is an arrant egomaniac. Even after all this uproar, he is still bragging about his former school. It doesn't occur to him to say "Enough about this, already!"
Speedwell, if you weren't such a dupe of collectivist thinking, MY actions couldn't embarrass YOU.
Insofar as your rants reflect badly on me, who identifies as a libertarian, they embarrass me. There, I put it in terms you can understand.
The rest of the crowd probably understands that I am putting myself in your place and feeling some of the shame that you are apparently incapable of feeling. It's empathy, part of being human (and apparently also part of being simian, canine, and feline).
Fixed your typo ; )
It appears PZ hasn't started counting yet, or the thread would be closed. I'm changing my vote from Pete Rooke to John Kwok. Pete seemed to understand he need to post quietly, and did so. Mr. Kwok doesn't grasp that sometimes the best thing you can do is to just shut up.
Africangenesis,
Thank you for proving my point about Libertarian derailments.
Libertarians. The record speaks for itself. Even PZ personally asked you not to post here for 24 hours and you proceed by making dozens of comments.
I have no idea what you are talking about.
If you were on my side I'd want you to shut up too. In fact, when your pseudoscientific ramblings include the word "evolution" I want you to shut up, lest a creationist takes notice.
Quite frankly, half of what you write is unintelligible and the other half is just plain wrong. Don't bother responding as I am done with you.
@545
De gustibus non est disputandum, I suppose. I make no judgment calls, just giving objective reality a fair appraisal. I know I appreciate it when people point out my own inconsistencies.
I honestly and earnestly don't think he can. His posts read as classic NPD. Usually, people without NPD would be too humiliated to post after reading such excoriating jibes against them, which is a marker for people with NPD - they don't really experience shame and are oblivious to why their immodest and grandiose assertions are boorish and subject to ridicule. He keeps shoving his foot in his mouth without knowing he's done so. We are all just little day players and props in Kwok's solipsism.
Katrina @449: Thank you for the limoncello recipe!
Have you noticed that Pharyngula has turned into the illicit spawn of a threesome amongst Scientific American, Skeptic, and Good Housekeeping?
Don't get me wrong, I think that's a Good Thing!
Incidentally, I want to point out that I'm not saying Libertarians never derail threads. Even just in the last few months, that would be a silly statement. I just wanted to point out that it's not exactly rare to have people ranting about Libertarians before they appear, which turns into a Libertarian derailment. If PZ et al. are cool with that, then great. But categorically pretending it never happens seems kind of silly.
Not to mention Gourmetheists!
Does it have to be lesbians? Nothing at all against lesbians, but they just don't, ah....do it for me.
I would rather think, instead, about studly dudes with tight buns, the light rippling across their broad, lightly-tanned shoulders as they lean forward to roll their d20's on the tabletop.....
We are doing fantasy, yes?
;)
heliobates to John Kwok:
Oh, sweet FSM!! (rolling around on the floor laughing)
Heliobates FTW!
@ Leigh and Katrina: I use the same Limoncello recipe... excellent with Meyer lemons if you can get your hands on them (I get Mom to send them to me from her tree in CA). Yum!
Leigh @ 550: Hmm. . . I think you've just described my life, somehow. I'll have to ponder that.
Mezzobuff @ 555: I'm glad you like it. My older recipe Had a greater water-to-alcohol ratio, but this one ends up thick and sweet. It goes down a little too well.
I'll be leaving bella Naploli this summer. I'm hoping to take a few of the Sorrento lemon seeds back with me to see what I can do with them. Last week, I bought just over 2kg of lemons at a roadside stand in Sorrento. when I looked in the bag, I had exactly four lemons!
@ Heliobates:
First Dolores Umbridge, then Gilderoy Lockheart. Is it too soon to put in an OM nomination for March?
"You're the Gilderoy Lockheart of Pharyngula." Perfect!
As to decloaking and entering the fray more frequently, by the time I reach end of thread, I find myself in agreement with the remarks at 433, 442 and 461, that my sentiments have already been expressed, and often better than I would have done so. It seems silly to drop in simply to say "This."
RE 481: "Just to make it clear what he's moaning about, PZ called Ken Miller a creationist. Which, being a theist, he surely is - little point in worshipping a deity if it didn't at the very least create the universe, eh? Ken is most definitely not a Creationist, though."
Thanks for the upper-case/lower-case differentiation, Anthony. I've had my avowed-atheist hackles raised by the assertion that creationists are not scientists, therefore anyone who gives a deity credit for the Beginning is a creationist and thus cannot be a scientist. Since I have many friends in that category (few of whom are famous enough to know Kwok; their good fortune!), I resented seeing them tossed on the midden with the unspeakable IDiots and Creationists. Mild-mannered theistic small-c creationist won't run up my blood pressure. Eric the half-bee (who directed me hither) and I have argu-, um, discussions on whether or not they're harmless; he'd qualify it with [not entirely.]
My mother liked to quote a favorite minister who said, "In the beginning, god, that's all that matters," and she was perfectly happy with scientific explanations, mostly. She did, however, ask me how something—i.e., the Big Bang—could come from nothing so obviously, yes, goddidit. This effort, amongst many others, was entirely insufficient to haul me back to liberal Methodism from the unhallowed haunts of rational atheism, in which I have dwelt since about the time PZ entered the world.
It was much more shocking to be an atheist, or even an agnostic, back in the Cold War era, when commie=atheist, therefore atheist=commie; and it had been refreshing over the years to see society become more accepting. The recent runs of assorted Evangelists-in-Chief and the resurgence of evangelicalism are deeply frightening, and I have been unable to understand why mainstream christians haven't put up more of a fight to reclaim their religion from the extremists. At least there seems to be hope that moderate republicans can reclaim their party; may it prove so! I suppose this is why half-bee won't agree to harmless; unless the theists are strongly helping repel the creotards rather than crossing the street to avoid the melee, they're part of the precipitate rather than the solution.
Yoicks! Kel & others invited us lurkers to share, and once I got started, I kept on going. You happy? It's your own welcoming fault!
Btw, might someone refer me to a handy-dandy basic tutorial on how to change fonts, assign attributes, quote pieces of previous posts? I'm an HTML idiot.
I hope it's now obvious why I wanted Africangenesis nominated...
It is as easy to point to government distortions of the market, and an inherently unstable leveraged system of money creation as it is to "deregulation" that was just peripheral to the problem.
Deregulation FUCKING CAUSED the inherently unstable leveraged system. Are you seriously saying that this depression would have occurred and been this bad without allowing derivative trading?
Libertarians are, in a way, worse than godbots. Where there is a theoretical possibility that there is a God of some sort, libertarian economics have failed so badly and repeatedly that advocating them is beyond reason and reality.
Phrogge, here are some basics:
For indented quoting, use the blockquote tag.
<blockquote>Indented blocked quote using "blockquote"</blockquote>
For italics use the <i> tag: <i>italics</i> = italics
Similarly, for bold use the <b> tag, for underline use <u>, for strikeout use <s>.
Blockquoting has some pitfalls. It tends to eat hard newlines, but the <p> tag can help you there. Still, the spacing gets a little weird when you try to blockquote more than one paragraph in a single block.
I'll leave the instructions for setting font style and size changes and creating bulletted and enumerated lists to the experts.
Remember: 'Preview' is your friend! Be aware, however, that Preview eats character symbol insertions like <. Best to select/copy your entire comment before previewing when you use those ampersand prefixes, and paste right back in before editing. Rise, repeat, for each preview. This isn't necessary unless you use ampersand-prefixed symbols.
HTH
I fear you may be unclear on the concept of FF, dear. Plausibility has little to do with it. (Well, I tried to do believable characterisation, but few fannits have even heard of the concept.)
Hey! I resemble that remark!
You were different, for starters you actually have shown a willingness to learn. facilis is hung up on presupposition and won't even admit to the shortcomings when he's been demonstrated wrong. He'll have his argument ripped apart in one thread, then will bring the same argument in another thread for the cycle to start again. Maybe it's that you see something in him others cannot, because of the similar starting perspectives. But honestly every time I see him post, it's like he hasn't learned a damn thing, and certainly hasn't even tried to understand where others are coming from - which is really odd considering he says his proof is the impossibility of the contrary.
It's good to see that lurkers here are posting, I find it good being a non-scientist here because it means I can learn from all the others who are scientists (or knowledgeable in scientific matters)
I too wish to thank all the delurkers. Good on yas!
Stu,
"Are you seriously saying that this depression would have occurred and been this bad without allowing derivative trading?"
Can you name the "deregulation" that allowed derivative trading? A link in the causal train doesn't make something responsible for all the consequences. The whole system was highly leveraged, including the money supply itself. The government imprimatur on FREDDIE and FANNIE created a backing market for those derivatives. The federal reserve had kept interest rates too low too long in order to stimulate the economy, creating a housing bubble, disincentivising saving and sending international savings in search of returns at every higher risks. This all could easily have been limited to the consequences as of last August and would not have spread to "main street", if the government had known how to "print' money. Instead all it can do is push the unstable pyramid of leverage to rebuild. It wants banks to lend and consumers to borrown in the face of the uncertainty of a recession. Destabilizing government interference was all over this economy, and you really want to point to just deregulation?
Africangenesis,
Government and Business were (are? to a slightly less extent) playing the same hand. What Business wanted the government gave. Business cannot be expected to regulate itself, its only goal is more money and it doesn't care what gets smashed in the process.
This all could easily have been limited to the consequences as of last August and would not have spread to "main street", if the government had known how to "print' money.
I give up. You're too stupid and pig-headed to reason with.
Stu,
"I give up. You're too stupid and pig-headed to reason with."
Are we supposed to be impressed by your unwillingness or inability to address the substance?
Watchman:
Damn, I'm slow! I had to say that out loud to get the joke!
Good one!
Just like another famous plonkee: The Infamous Kenny.
cicely @ #553
"Does it have to be lesbians? Nothing at all against lesbians, but they just don't, ah....do it for me."
No,of course not cicely. If lesbians did it for everyone, they'd never get anything done.
Just think of whatever takes to erase all thoughts of BeelzeBarb.
We are.
I'm reposting to reiterate, reinforce, and evangelize my vote for Simon. Kwok is playing you all like a strat on this thread, and loving it. SIMON cannot be tolerated; folks like Kwok can't be avoided.
Personal Kwokness: RFC 2271
Pete Rooke