You might benefit from focusing your entire concentration on one thread at a time.
We certainly would.
Well I hope you can forgive me for thinking that I might need to point out something bleedingly obvious to you.
Searching for a word that describes posting nonsense for the pleasure of seeing other people suffer…
Really?
Good idea. And perhaps pick a book that isn’t the equivalent of “History For Dummies”, which may actually exist, for all I know.
I took a look at “Don’t Know Much About History” a few minutes ago. The portion you attempted to quote reads as follows(it is part of a day-by-day chronology of WWII, written in that annoying, newscaster-style present tense): “A presidential order requires all aliens to register with the government. This is the beginning of a plan to move Japanese-Americans into internment camps in the belief that they might aid the enemy.” Kenneth C. Davis, "Don’t Know Much About History, p. 374. There were 4 other mentions of Japanese internment in the index; none of them comes even this close to your paraphrase. Scott, here are a few things you might want to notice about this excerpt. It does not mention the Smith Act or any other law. It talks about a presidential order. It does not say the the order caused the internment. The excerpt is not internally consistent: it talks about registering aliens and interning Japanese-Americans, which generally is used to refer to American citizens of Japanese ancestry. In the bookstore I usually go to, books like this are surrounded by much meatier history books. Did you look through a bunch of them before you finally found something in this rather superficial book that could possibly be interpreted as associating the registering of aliens with the internment of citizens?
For the ∞th time, I agree with the opinions of many dopers that I was incorrect to have said that. I did not, however, look for a book that could even buttress my position in the least. Instead, I looked for one that went into the mechanics of the interment.
I went to the bookstore. I asked the clerk for books about the internment, only to be told they would have to be special ordered. She went on to suggest I browse. I looked through the indexes of several WWII books, chosen at random, only to find nothing. Then, I looked for general history books, flipped to the indexes of several, and found what little I could. By that time, I had to get to work. No more time for research. When you asked me what book I read, it in, I tried to recall the title, and that seemed to have been it. Perhaps that wasn’t it.
You could just put on the T-shirt that reads “ALWAYS RIGHT”. 
Actually, for some strange reason… probably because of the username… I mentally picture you wearing a tartan kilt. (But never on a windy day… ::shudder:: )
So what was decided in that Giraffe thread about the word? When last I saw it, it still seemed rather open.
I guess I could go look…
Scott, are you or were you a student at Hopkins? Or do you work there? IIRC, there are four libraries on the Homewood campus. Good ones.
Judging by the one hundred and sixteen times you’ve already posted to this thread alone, I call it exactly what it is: unmitigated bullshit.
I known. However, while my staff id card doubles as a library card, and I have in fact took out books from it, it is the summer. I am currently working at a different job, and am not able to get to campus this week.
Please elaborate. Are you saying that the fact that people say I am wrong is bullshit? 
Oh, I get it. You mean that my claims of self improvement is bullshit. Well, I have posted to this thread, since it is free entertainment. However, I have started only one thread in GD since this began. What is more, it is quite tame. What do you call that, besides self improvement?
Make that one hundred and seventeen with the last one coming <i>inside a minute</i> from prior comment.
And no, to no one’s surprise – least of all my own – that’s not what I am saying at all. Perhaps you should take your own advice and read the posts you’re responding to until you get some faint glimmer of comprehension about what it is they are trying to tell you. In this particular incidence all you’ve done is prove me right. Think about it.
Not to worry, I won’t be holding my breath.
::::sigh::::
One hundred and eighteen.
You’ve managed to respond to yourself prior to my own reply. If that’s not the well known condition, postitis diarrhea major, I don’t know what is.
QED.
No, all we have to go on is the results of your posting style. Based on no more than that, we have now spent about twenty-one pages mentioning, with varying degrees of subtlety, that those results are sub-optimal.
I had to read this about three times, but I think I have the gist of it. What I think you are saying is that you have posted in such a way as to avoid misunderstanding on a few occasions.
The trouble being that your second example in particular is not well chosen.
You posted as follows:
Now the trouble is that this is wrong on pretty much every level. Language is a social contract, and if you choose to use words in non-standard ways, you are wrong pretty much by definition and the rest of the world is right. And it nearly guarantees that you will be misunderstood.
Did you notice that UncleBeer mentioned exactly this to you in his subsequent post?
And that was three months ago, and you are still displaying the same set of problems. Hence this thread.
So if you post shit that doesn’t make any sense (to anyone else), it gets tiresome to have you repeatedly declare victory, and then to trumpet your triumphs in subsequent threads. First, you didn’t make any sense, so it is impossible for anyone else to tell what the fuck you were talking about. Second, when you do finally post something understandable, you have the unfortunate habit of being wrong. Witness the Japanese internment camp example. Third, you have the annoying habit of following up your "explanations’ with further examples of the kind of slop-ass thinking and posting that made the explanation necessary in the first place. To wit, your last sentence in the second linked post:
Now, maybe by “ban”, you mean “waiting period before purchase”, or “minor restriction of an unspecific type”, or even “untying the shoe laces of people who fall asleep on the bus”. There isn’t any way to tell. So, interpreting the sentence in accordance with common rules of language, we translate it from Scott-speak into English, we get 'banning guns is different from prohibiting them." Which is stupid. “Ban” and “prohibition” are synonyms.
Now maybe, if I read over your post a few more times, I could tease out some meaning that is not nearly as ridiculous. But, the times I tried with other posts, we wound up finding that even after all the effort, you were still wrong. So, why should we give a fuck?
I realize that you are young. But you are also stubborn, and therefore it is harder for you than for most to learn the Prime Lesson of the SDMB. Most new members pick this up in the first few weeks, and either deal with it, or move on to greener pastures. The Prime Lesson is:
I can’t remember who said it, but some one said that Dopers are used to being the smartest one in the room. I would add that long-term Dopers are the ones who have stopped assuming that it is still true when they post on the Dope.
And I second the advice of those who recommend that you concentrate on one post, or one thread, at a time. There is usually more there than you are allotting yourself time to find out.
Regards,
Shodan
I blame tabbed browsing. :rolleyes:
Didn’t Hitler once say something like that?
Sorry VM, but this thread has gone on far too long without any mention of Hitler. Duke of Rat deserves partial credit for the word ‘nazi’ in post #859, but Godwin’s law is very specific about a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler, not just ‘a nazi’.
This thread is dangerously close to becoming a forum unto itself.
Oh man, thank you Squink. That made me literally laugh out loud. You made my day.