Noyau (2)

…the noyau, an animal society held together by mutual animosity rather than co-operation

Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative.

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2,941 thoughts on “Noyau (2)”

  2. Allan Miller,

    My French is pretty dire, but I do recall walking down the Champs Elysees (as is my wont), and being approached by one of a group of Americans who asked me in somewhat pained French “Excuse me, do you have a lunatic?”
    So I lit his cigarette.
    I reckon if my French was any better, I wouldn’t have understood him at all.

    Alan, is ‘persil’ the brand name, or does it have some other connotation?

  4. Why re-invent the wheel?

    Yep. Why do class experiments? Why take a radio to bits? There’ll be someone who’s already done it.

  5. Alan,

    How disappointing. My funny story seems to have gone down like a lead balloon. I must work on my timing!

    Yes. Your story would go over better if you weren’t in the middle of trying and failing to defend yourself from charges of dishonesty. Very bad timing.

  7. Allan, I notice that you would like to change the subject.

    Would that, by any chance, have something to do with the fact that you are on record supporting Alan’s claim, yet have failed to explain why his second statement should be taken as ironic when it merely recapitulates the first, which was clearly sincere?

  8. DNA_Jock,

    In Alan’s first comment, my meters picked up exaggeration for humorous effect.

    In Alan’s second comment, my meters picked up full-blown sardony.

    You’re still avoiding my question. I did not ask whether your meters “picked up exaggeration”. I asked, quite clearly:

    For the record, and using your superior irony-detection ability, was Alan’s apology ironic?

    I asked Alan the same question:

    For the record, are you actually denying that your statement above was sincere?

    The apology was sincere — Alan actually was apologizing for his poor behavior. So why would you and Alan be reluctant to affirm that? You and I both know the answer, but let me spell it out for the sake of our audience.

    If you and Alan were to admit that the apology was sincere, then you’d have no basis for claiming the second comment was insincere. As I put it to Patrick:

    When someone sincerely…

    a) apologizes for a false accusation;
    b) says that it was emotionally driven, but stresses that that’s not an excuse; and
    c) says that he’ll try to control his emotions in the future;

    and then, 26 hours later, says effectively the same thing:

    d) that he has a lying problem;
    e) that it’s his problem;
    f) that it’s an emotional response that he’s “learning to curb”;

    … the obvious and sensible conclusion is that neither comment is ironic.

    Your mockery backfired. That’s good — it’s enjoyable when unwarranted arrogance sabotages itself. I’m sure that you’re not enjoying this, but why compound the problem by continuing to deny your mistake? People will forget it sooner if you acknowledge it and move on.

    So again:

    For the record, and using your superior irony-detection ability, was Alan’s apology ironic?

    And for Alan:

    For the record, are you actually denying that your statement above was sincere?

  9. Mung: Why re-invent the wheel?

    To learn. I can see why that does not strike you as a worthwhile endeavour.

  10. keiths,

    Allan, I notice that you would like to change the subject.

    Would that, by any chance, have something to do with the fact that you are on record supporting Alan’s claim, yet […]

    Evidence please? I don’t believe I have commented on this particular spat. But it’s been going on so long I accept I could have said something and then forgotten. Time moves on, y’know?

  11. “For the record”, I did find Alan’s apology in some way ironic, and I apologize for attempting to answer your question in a manner that was relevant to your argument. It won’t happen again.

  12. Allan Miller:
    keiths,

    Evidence please? I don’t believe I have commented on this particular spat. But it’s been going on so long I accept I could have said something and then forgotten. Time moves on, y’know?

    According to Freud, time does not move on in the unconscious mind. Has no “history.” It just kind of, you know….sticks.

  13. keiths: Allan, I notice that you would like to change the subject.

    Such a mind reader you are! It’s not like you’re not intent on avoiding the 800lb gorilla in the room. Alan contradicts your interpretation of what Alan meant. Who better to know what Alan meant than Alan himself?

    Maybe if we take a poll about what Alan meant we can get a better idea of what he really meant. What do you say? Or shall we continue on with your sample size of one?

  15. DNA_Jock:
    Allan Miller,

    My French is pretty dire, but I do recall walking down the Champs Elysees (as is my wont), and being approached by one of a group of Americans who asked me in somewhat pained French “Excuse me, do you have a lunatic?”
    So I lit his cigarette.
    I reckon if my French was any better, I wouldn’t have understood him at all.

    🙂

    Alan, is ‘persil’ the brand name, or does it have some other connotation?

    I was just a lunch at the neighbours. Another guest was an English woman married to her French husband and living in Lyons for over forty years. My wife recounted the parsley story which caused this lady to remember her husband’s and her parents meeting and planning a meal. Her parents offered to do the shopping with a list supplied by her husband’s parents. The list included “persil”. They came back with washing powder.

    To answer your question, there are two common varieties of parsley: the flat-leaf variety, considered best for flavour, and the variety considered good for garnishing and decoration – which is short and curly!

  18. keiths: Your story would go over better if you weren’t in the middle of trying and failing to defend yourself from charges of dishonesty.

    *re-suspends resolution not waste further keystrokes*

    I’m defending myself against charges of dishonesty? What specific charges of dishonesty are you making? And it occurs to me that, though this is Lizzie’s benign dictatorship, in her absence we can ask our esteemed clientele to act as jury to your prosecutor and judge, rather than you take on all three rôles.

    It’s no problem for me to publish an announcement PM containing your charges of dishonesty and see what the other members here think of them. We have about 300 or so registered members of which around 50 are currently active.

    Though I do wonder what would satisfy you.

  19. Alan:

    I’m defending myself against charges of dishonesty?

    Alan,

    You know perfectly well that you’re defending yourself against charges of dishonesty. Why pretend that you don’t? It’s dishonest.

    What specific charges of dishonesty are you making?

    Again, you know perfectly well. You confirmed it yourself in your first comment in this exchange:

    Keiths accuses me of having an admitted lying problem on the strength of my remark in an exchange of comments with walto.

    Alan, you just provided two fresh demonstrations of your dishonesty. That’s pitiful enough from an ethical perspective, but setting questions of ethics aside, does dishonesty strike you as the right tactic to employ when you’re trying to argue that you don’t have a lying problem?

    Unbelievable.

    More tomorrow.

  20. Alan Fox,

    That’s happened to me a lot!

    There is an expression somewhere between concentration and disgust adopted by most French natives when confronted with my French! 😀

  23. Alan, your friend’s parents’ persil confusion reminds of the time when, hiking in Austria, we were chatting with a German gal who wanted to practice her English. She told us she had just sent a postcard to her High School English teacher, describing the “noble white” she had seen in the mountains.
    We look perturbed.
    “Noble white. How do you say in English ‘Edelweiss’?”
    “Edelweiss”
    “Yes, but in English?”
    “It’s still Edelweiss, you don’t translate it”
    [She facepalms]

  24. keiths: You know perfectly well that you’re defending yourself against charges of dishonesty. Why pretend that you don’t? It’s dishonest.

    Catch 22

  25. Allan Miller: I think you may be have confused your Al(l)ans.

    Nah. keiths was writing to you but talking about Alan Fox. So my use of ‘Alan’ referred to Alan Fox.

  28. Mung:
    Am I no longer the most self-righteous pompous ass posting here?

    You haven’t been the most, not since keiths has been posting here.

    Probably not even second most … 🙂

  29. Mung:

    Am I no longer the most self-righteous pompous ass posting here?

    hotshoe:

    You haven’t been the most, not since keiths has been posting here.

    Hotshoe is modestly excluding herself from the running. Don’t sell yourself short, hotshoe!

  30. keiths, to Alan:

    You know perfectly well that you’re defending yourself against charges of dishonesty. Why pretend that you don’t? It’s dishonest.

    newton:

    Catch 22

    It isn’t a Catch-22. Alan could have simply defended himself without pretending that he didn’t know what this was all about.

    The additional dishonesty was gratuitous and counterproductive. And baffling — what on earth did he think he was going to gain by it?

  31. keiths: Hotshoe is modestly excluding herself from the running.

    Points for modesty. Points for not entering a race she can’t win.

  32. FWIW, I’ve never been able to put hotshoe higher than 11 on the pompous, self-righteous ass scale, while I myself have reached two on six separate occasions (and once with a bullet!)

    So I think she’s kind of a plodder, and should basically hang it up.

  33. keiths: You know perfectly well that you’re defending yourself against charges of dishonesty. Why pretend that you don’t? It’s dishonest.

    *chuckles*

    I’m not yet defending myself against your smears, allegations and innuendoes because you haven’t yet supported them with evidence.

    Here’s what I said

    I’m defending myself against charges of dishonesty? What specific charges of dishonesty are you making?

    If you have a specific accusation, that you can support with evidence, then please do so. My reason for asking is so that I can straw poll our fellow members as to whether they agree with you. You have suggested that others agree with your unsupported claims that I am a habitual liar, dishonest and my moderation sucks. I’d like to test your claim and don’t want to misrepresent you.

  35. FMM is being the utterly dishonest piece of shit that he has always been. OK, not news, but he does seem especially belligerent in his crude dishonesty than usual.

    He’s defending “God,” apparently, and is too stupid and dishonest to care that I didn’t address any “God” at all, only the insipid lies of the vile FMM.

    Starts here, in case anyone’s wondering.

    God, he’s a disgusting pervert and a copious liar. He seems to be so divorced from actual honesty that when I fault his idiocy he assumes that I’m attacking God. Effectively, he apparently does think of himself as God. But that’s his blasphemy, as well as his disgusting idiocy and dishonesty. Nothing’s really too false for this vile piece of shit to say, even after having been called on his gross dishonesty.

    Glen Davidson

  37. The filthy liar FMM shows just what a basis for religion and truth he really has in his copious lies and maligning accusations.

    What a disgusting being he really is, a shining example for why not to become a thoroughly dishonest asshole like himself.

    Glen Davidson

  39. Neil Rickert:
    GlenDavidson,

    Really, don’t let him get under your skin.

    There is that “Ignore Commenter” you can click.

    I may have to go for it.

    Still, there’s something about such an egregious liar. A discussion about belief and its nature seemed possible, then it was all about his hallucinations revolving around “God.”

    But perhaps I should put my first person on ignore, for a while at least.

    Glen Davidson

  40. GlenDavidson:
    God, he’s a disgusting pervert and a copious liar.He seems to be so divorced from actual honesty that when I fault his idiocy he assumes that I’m attacking God.Effectively, he apparently does think of himself as God.But that’s his blasphemy, as well as his disgusting idiocy and dishonesty.Nothing’s really too false for this vile piece of shitto say, even after having been called on his gross dishonesty.

    Hey, calm down. He is being religious, and this is how they think. There but for choosing the right parents, goes you or I.

  41. Flint: Hey, calm down. He is being religious, and this is how they think. There but for choosing the right parents, goes you or I.

    I bless the name of Darwin each and every day for sparing me such a fate.

    At least that, or something akin to it, is what a number of theists would like to think.

    Glen Davidson

  42. The difficulties many of us have with FMM actually don’t have anything to do with his commitment to theism. The difficulties stem from his commitment to presuppositional apologetics. It’s because of that commitment that he thinks that everyone knows that God exists, no matter what one says to the contrary, or that one cannot have any intelligible thoughts whatsoever without accepting the reality of God. Presuppositionalism is a very specific approach that is widely rejected by other theists.

  43. Mung,

    It’s not as if there’s anything objectively wrong with his behavior.

    OMFG, that again.

  44. I don’t see FMM as lying, but I see his stance as asserting that everyone who disagrees with him as being a liar. Same with mung.

    It is not possible to be a nonbeliever; therefore, anyone who does not believe is lying.

  45. Mung:
    It’s not as if there’s anything objectively wrong with his behavior.

    And mung surges into the lead

  46. petrushka:
    I don’t see FMM as lying, but I see his stance as asserting that everyone who disagrees with him as being a liar. Same with mung.

    It is not possible to be a nonbeliever; therefore, anyone who does not believe is lying.

    It is not his assertion, it is revealed Truth.

  47. KN, I took a look at the wiki link you posted for presuppositionalism (for which, thanks), but FMM doesn’t seem to me to fit precisely in one of the camps listed there. I was wondering if he’d care to comment on how he thinks his own views compare to the two or three apologists highlighted in that article….

  48. Mung,

    Verily I say unto thee, if another’s actions tickest thou off and thou hath not faith, then shalt thou not give it voice, for thou hast no standard but thine own.

    Blessed are they who rejoice in the Lord, for they can moan their fucking heads off, for they may (for all anyone knowest) be right in the eyes of the Lord. (Though seeest thou Matt Clause 7 Subsection 1-3).

  49. petrushka: It is not possible to be a nonbeliever; therefore, anyone who does not believe is lying.

    I do not think that anyone who disagrees with me is a liar. I also don’t think that being a non-believer makes a person a liar. Do try to do better, petrushka.

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