No need to even install Firefox if IE is preferred. He can download IESPELL from http://www.iespell.com/. It is a free add-in that works great and has some added abilities that I love. I have made some simple modifications to it that allow be to right click on a word and look it up in IMDB, Baseball-reference, Google, Google-Images, wikipedia and a few others. It comes default with a look up to Merriam Webster on-line.
Gonzomax, I really recommend you get a spell checker and use it. IESPELL has been a big help for me.
I’ve always imagined gonzomax as a Willie Nelson look-alike, speeding towards Barstow with one hand on the wheel and a great honking joint in the other, and a pint of ether clamped between his knees. Truly, who wishes to break a butterfly on a wheel?
Right. Might as well take a big dump on myself – don’t embarrass easy, never have – and say that although gonzomax is certainly not the best of writers especially in a quasi-Mensa lair like the SDMB prides/brags itself to be, his heart is certainly in the right place.
Do some of his posts approach hieroglyphics? Maybe, but so what? Many others are actually not just quite clear (not grading on composition and/or grammar) but slice right through the bullshit.
Speaking of which, I’d certainly nominate Finn’s endless Israel’s papyrus and xt’s self-absorbed way over anything gonzo has ever posted for the Most Boring Poster Awards.
Lastly, lay-off of friend 'luc. He sure as shite doesn’t need my help in defending (or crushing) anyone who messes with him, but he’s got intelligence, knowledge, prose and wit that make the two aforementioned dickwads exactly what they are: legends in their own minds.
Right, to clarify then: if one’s purpose here is to fight ignorance, share information, engage in honest discussion, relate and challenge facts or engage in intellectually rewarding debate? In that case, a beclowned troll does not contribute.
In fact, if a troll’s only efforts are to be as relentlessly dishonest and as disruptive as possible in order to get a few lulz, they belong with the rest of the Goons over at Something Awful, not somewhere whose mission statement is fighting ignorance.
If you want someone who’ll troll relentlessly, ‘forgets’ facts from one thread (or post) to the next and sees nothing particularly wrong with trying to pick an argument about the specifics of documents they’ve not read and whose contents they have no intentions of reading?
Then lucy is your troll of choice.
Likewise, if in reading GD threads you aren’t interested in seeing what the actual facts are, which posters are speaking out of their asses (again), which arguments are specious, which claims are wilfully ignorant… then you might prefer a clowning troll and use your mouse’s scroll wheel to avoid someone pointing out, again, that the usual suspects are doing their best to fight knowledge… again.
As long as the mods refuse to do their jobs and enforce the rule against spreading information that is either false, or that one should know if false, we’ll have willfully ignorant, politically motivated trolling until the cows come home, along with those who get their yuks from it and those who try to prevent members of the peanut gallery from being tricked by trolls’ efforts at deception.
Why. ? I nominate you children to go first. Is there no logic.? Is this a mass of ganglia responding. ?
Do you really thing that was a thoughtful answer. ? Don"t waste time writing responses like that . It is not worth reading.
There are others on this board that have the same depth of economic thought that you do. They are grouped with you as ignorant. Economics appears to be beyond you. Perhaps you should skip those arguments for now. Come back when you grow up . Snotty remarks do not win. Thats all you bring. that and spelling. Wow, what depth.
Hm…now if only my wife would say something along those lines.
“Snotty remarks do not win.” (in bed)…
True enough. Perhaps you have a point Atomicktom…
“Soros and Ramm have a message.” (in bed)…
:eek: Gods…the picture of that has scared me for…well, not life. But I probably won’t be able to eat tonight at any rate.
Well, you know, coming from you gonzo that means…absolutely nothing. Sort of on par with a ignorant and a little slow creationist making fun of someone trying to explain evolution to them.
Well, I won’t speak for them of course, but I’m fairly confident that they are going to be equally and militantly unconcerned by your weighty criticism.
And you would know this…how exactly? You wouldn’t know economics if it sat on your lap and called you mama.
And yet as lightweight as my posts are (and I freely admit I’m no economics expert), they are taken more seriously than your drive by posts are. Why do you suppose that is? Are a majority of 'dopers also ignorant of economics, and only you (and your new found friend Redfury, who has gallantly come to your aid) the only prophets of knowledge around these parts.
Gonzo…seriously…did you READ the thread? You were wrong about nearly everything you posted that was coherent. Granted, some of your more incoherent rantings (I have to agree with one of the posters above that thankfully they are at least short) MAY have had hidden truths in them that simply couldn’t be puzzled out. But on everything that COULD be puzzled out you were pretty much, well wrong…and stupidly wrong most of the time.
Simply put you don’t have a clue how the market works, what supply and demand actually means, or how commodities are bought and sold or what does or doesn’t actually influence the price of commodities like oil. You are ignorant…which isn’t a sin. No one is born knowing everything or really anything. You are also stupid…which probably isn’t your fault. No one can change the level of intelligence they are born with. What IS a sin is that you are ignorant and make no effort to educate yourself, despite belonging to this message board. That is the worst kind of sin…when the knowledge is there for you to absorb. But you are so set in your ways that no amount of argument is going to sway you…you know what you know, don’t bother you with any of that evidence stuff.
On reflection…maybe you are simply too stupid TO learn. I say this in all honesty as if you are, then I am being unfair to you and should beg (or at least ask) your pardon. As I said, it’s not your fault you are stupid, and if your ignorance stems from that…well, you have no choice.
Well, my spelling is better than your’s is (as is my sentence structure)…but then that isn’t saying much. I freely admit that I’m no writer…and I’m lazy to boot.
What I DO have that you don’t seem to is I’m generally willing to admit when I’m wrong…if the poster I’m debating shows me to be wrong (in my own mind). It’s happened many times on this board where I came into a discussion being pretty firm in what I thought was the ‘truth’…only to find that I was either partly or fully wrong. I may not always be convinced…but when I am I freely admit it and I re-evaluate my assumptions and viewpoint and add the new information.
That and the fact that lightweight as my posts are (for this board) I actually HAVE an argument usually…unlike you who has a link.
Self-absorbed, ehe? Well, perhaps I am at that Red. It really says something that you would defend good ole gonzomax. I’m sure he is heartened to have a stalwart defender such as yourself, helping him out in his hour of need and getting in a good dig on your old pal XT to boot.
And seriously Red, you have made me think about gonzo in a new light. There IS something about him that makes him a cut above some others. At least he isn’t a Spaniard!
Have a good weekend yourself Red and try and stay out of trouble, ehe?
I can understand the attraction. I mean, come on, doesn’t “Your endless Israel’s papyrus” sound like Gonzotext?
Perhaps Angry Drunkard is a sub-dialect of Ignorant Moron?
By Jove, I think I may be on to something!
Yep. The usual pile of manure you sit on and pretend to look down at the rest of us from.
Keep trying, you pompous asswipe.
xt, not my problem that you have self-hatred issues. Look at the bright side, if it wasn’t for us your ancestors would have probably had their heart ripped out by one barbaric god or another and then…you wouldn’t be here to defend all that is indefensible about naked greed.
Then again as I told you long ago, go ahead and get that full Anglosaxon blood transfusion and call MJ for tips on how to look less Hispanic/dark.
What’s that? Colonialism was good? White Men had a Burden? Thank goodness for the brutalization and near extermination of native populations in the name of gold, slaves and land?
Awwwww you, what a scamp!
P.S. I see you’re probably hitting the sauce pretty early today, so you might want to read this after you’ve had a chance to sober up, or just read it now… very… sloooooowly: relying on facts in debates and expecting people to know what the fuck they’re talking about before they decide to start an argument, or at the very least being willing to evaluate data and concede when they’re spewing bullshit, is not pompous, it’s kinda, ya know, what people who aren’t brainstem-level, frothing, trollish babblers… understand to be proper debating behavior.
Which means, of course, that no fair person would expect you to have achieved that kind of understanding.
Happy drinking.
I think it is a matter that the facts don’t fit the way the world should actually work in their view. And I’m not specifically addressing elucidator here (although he annoys* the fuck out of me at times with his one line potshots). I think I’ve been just as guilty of it at times.
In the oil threads it appears that some think that the high price of oil is the result of collusion among the oil companies, or grand conspiracies involving the Bush family and the Stonecutters (there might be reverse vampires involved somewhere , too). It involves a world view where super intelligent (and thus evil), or rich (and thus evil) beings have control of the markets and world governments for their own benefit.
Having worked in the oil industry and meeting many of these people who would be involved in such conspiracies if they existed, my world view is somewhat different. They just aren’t smart enough to manipulate much more than the companies they work within. Granted they may have some influence outside of their little realms, but there are too many players to make such conspiracies workable even if they could all agree with each other as to what their final goals are.
I relate it to a belief in God. There must be some controlling hand in this (insert issue of choice) that we can blame/worship rather than to chalking it up to some other source where no one person, or group of people, can be rationally faulted. People want to see that guiding hand because it gives them a form of power. If they could only influence/force/kill them then things will go the way they want them to and all would be right with the world. Randomness and chance scares the fuck out of people because it is so difficult to control.
Regarding gonzomax: You couldn’t pound information into his head with a sledge hammer.
*As annoyed as I can be by relatively anonymous posters on an internet message board. In other words, not much.
One wonders whether the gallery realizes how fortunate they are to be under the loving protection of Papa Peanut and his intellectual vigilante rope.
Thank you for the explanation, though, and it does make things clearer. Traditionally, I decide how important someone is by judging his own words and deeds, or by the esteem in which others hold him. In cases where the evidence is lacking, though, it helps for the subject has to point out his own importance—lest it go unnoticed and insufficiently heralded.
On the other hand, Finn is right, 'Lucy is just one of about a half dozen trolls who have been here so long that they are an institution on the SDMB; if the mods followed the rules they’d be banned post haste, but they won’t do that because, come on, it’s 'Lucy, man, he’s been here forever!
And I really had to giggle at you comparing him to H.L. Mencken. If you bother to read anything Mencken wrote, you’ll see that he has one key ingredient that 'Lucy utterly lacks: Substance. giggle 'Lucy and Mencken. I haven’t heard a more unlikely comparison since I read some freeper idiot comparing George W. Bush to Jesus Christ.
I suppose I go about things a little bit different, all in all. I try not to post to a thread unless I’ve already done my research, including reading up on any possible counter arguments and either finding out why they’re wrong, or seeing if they have some truth in them and modifying my position. Coming in a debate without knowing my shit is something I try to avoid whenever possible.
But you’re right, some folks don’t need no steenkin’ facts, they can invent/imagine/distort them to fit their worldviews. This is, unfortunately, particularly prevalent in political threads. Eight years of Bush’s presidency seems to have driven some posters absolutely insane, to the point where they not only reflexively oppose anything even vaguely connected with Bush (Ayieeee, oil companies!) but have adopted the same tactics of dishonesty and scumfuckery. It’s surprising how quickly some people have gone from “he lied to support his political agenda, what an evil peson!” to “so what if we have to lie to support our political agenda, at least it’s for a good cause.”
It’s vanishingly rare to see informed posters in GD, but it’s a real treat and a pleasure when they do grace us with their presence. The ignorance is just astounding. For instance, I once mentioned that Iran had, in the course of the IAEA’s inspections, denied access to a requested cite for inspections and then bulldozed it before inspectors could get there. The immediate response from some poster (fuck if I can remember who, exactly) was along the lines of it never happened and I was either making it up or relating someone else’s partisan talking points. A minute and a half of googling would have found Blix’ own words confirming the story. The barest minimum of research before joining the thread would have educated him on the story. Instead, rote denial was the order of the day and, of course, there was no retraction after the truth was made known. Forget about an admission that something had gone wrong with the very structure of how the poster was approaching the debate, and some serious changes would have to be made so that he could participate in fighting ignorance and not supporting dogmatic political ideology.
The laziness, sloppiness, stupidity and pure venal ennui of some posters is simply mind blowing. Brain glutton, for instance, has a habit of regurgitating propaganda totally uncritically. Indeed, without evidence of the barest desire to perform due diligence, without an iota of respect for the truth and, obviously, with the critical thinking skills God gave your average squirrel. He’s not alone, of course, in such behavior. But, among the egregious offenders, he certainly starts the most threads.
Of course there are, natch, mouthbreathing schmucks who view cleaving to the barest minimum standards of honest discourse as arrogance or pomposity.
I imagine that if he figured out that I take the time to lower my trousers before using the toilet and that I view shitting your pants as somewhat unseemly, Red Fury would accuse me of being an elitist, too.
Ignorance is forgivable. Hell, ignorance is to be celebrated in many circumstances as it allows the possibility of learning and growth, and points out areas that you need to work out.
Willful, militant ignorance is unforgivable.
And contrary to the board’s mission statement to boot.
(e.g. fact based)
Which, of course, is what makes conspiracy theories so attractive to people who feel scared, small and powerless. And what makes dogmatic politics attractive to those who can’t deal with shades of grey of learning the nuances of complicated situations.
But even such feelings aren’t a problem, if they can be dealt with once facts emerge.
Posters like Gonzo, who don’t read their own cites, don’t contribute more than drivebys to a debate, cite things which contradict their own positions… and then cop an attitude when their ignorance is pointed out?
They’re like someone who lets out a massive fart in a crowded elevator and then simply cannot figure out why the other people there treat them with disdain.
Yeepers.
If I had a dollar for every clue stick, clue-by-four and clue-nuke that went wasted on ideologue fools in GD, I’d be able to retire. That Gonzo has attracted such defenders as the furious red guy speaks to the type of folks they are.
Like I said above: point out that knowing about a subject before you opine on it is the barest minimum that should be expected in an honest debate and that if people are deceptive (which is a bad thing) others who are concerned about the truth will, perforce, be obliged to prevent onlookers from being deceived?
<shrug> I see similarity in the facility with satire, and not necessarily the focus of subject matter or political bent. And I’ve read enough Mencken to know that he’d probably be bemused by your apparent admiration, as you’re precisely the kind of credulous fool he frequently railed against. And true to form, too stupid to realize it.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go ice down my index finger.
