If they ain't listenin' ...

... the' ain't much point in talkin'

Here is another example of someone, with whom I have broad sympathy, who isn't listening and has no intention of doing so -- Cornelius Hunter: "It seems you don’t understand theism very well, and are projecting your own version of theism onto others. The result is a false dichotomy between your version of theism and atheism, a false history, and a flawed understanding of evolutionary thought."

I hope to put up a fuller post about this, but no promises.

edit:
Oddly enough, I think it is safe to predict that Mr Hunter will not make the same false assertions about Mr Torley that he did of me.

Another Tactical Mistake

Offended by religious group's highway blessing, atheists 'scrub' it away -- by "tactical mistake",I refer, of course, to the prior blessing of the roadway by the "religionists", who thereby "offended" the innocent, unassuming humanists.

Then again, when there are folk who hate the fact that you continue to breathe, then drawing breath, much less exhaling it as speech, is a "tactical mistake."

The magic of euphemism

Isn't it strange how that two words or phrases -- both meaning the same thing -- can elicit such wildly different responses?

For example, calling Sandra Fluke a 'slut' (*) is a big no-no and elicits howls of disapproval all across the land (**), including from so-called conservatives and Christians. However, calling her 'sexually liberated' or 'sexually adventurous', is a “good” thing; it’s a compliment!

For example, calling a person a ‘whore’ is a big no-no: How dare one use such insulting language! Yet, calling that same person a ‘prostitute’ is mildly complimentary (***).


I wonder, is it a matter so simple as the bluntness of the language employed? Is it a function of the shortness of the words used? Simple, direct, “Anglo-Saxon” words are insulting, but Latinate words or convoluted terms are complimentary?



(*) as she clearly is, by her own word.

(**) unless it's done approvingly, such as if she were the keynote speaker at one of those 'SlutWalks' all the “liberals”, and not a few pseudo-conservatives, were into last year.

(***) myself, I’d have more respect for a whore than for a slut, for a whore at least has the self-respect to demand something-of-value in return for self-abasement, whereas the slut just self-abases.

There is no 'communication' ...

... where there is no 'listening'. And there is neither 'communication' nor 'listening' where there is no intellectual honesty.

And, in fact, trying to 'communicate' with one who is not listening -- including not listening to what he himself has said -- only brings to the fore some degree of intellectual dishonesty and then sets it in stone. On this last, it's just simple psychology: once a person asserts a thing, even a thing he knows to be false (*), he tends to intransigently dig in his heels on the matter, especially if the other person tries to get him to simply admit the truth.

Once that happens, and depending on what one wishes to accomplish, it may be better to drop the matter (or even all matters) until he has come, of his own volition, to his intellectual senses.

(*) for example:
Person A: ""Communication" implies intellectual honesty."

Person B: "Believe it or not, it doesn't."

'Its nonjudgmentalism is a synonym for desertion and cruelty'

TheBestSchools: Belmont: Its nonjudgmentalism is a synonym for desertion and cruelty "... Belmonters might, however, serve on a blue-ribbon government committee for criminalizing Grandma’s (*) views—as part of a widely praised effort to combat prejudice against these “emerging family forms.” But one thing the Belmonters would never do is live that way. Or live among people who do."

(*) Who has the audacity to think "it’s a sin (!) that her never-married daughter has children by three different men".

Learn from my mistake

Learn from my mistake ... don't waste your money on Verizon wireless internet service. As a service, for which one spends actual money, it sucks. And it sucks even worse now that they've pushed the (to hear them talk about it, miraculous) "4G network" into this area.

Get ready to find out ...

All you folk who foolishly rail against free trade, refusing to learn that protectionism is the enemy of everyone's liberty, including of those few souls who materially benefit from it at everyone else's expense; all you folk who foolishly rail against "price gouging", refusing to understand that the "price gougers" are actually serving the interests of everyone (rather than of just the first to get there ... and of the leftists); all you folk who foolishly rail against a decentralized free market, refusing to understand that all central planning/control can *ever* produce is shortages ... well, have I got "good" news for you!

All your dreams are soon to come true -- Get ready to find out in real time (once again!) what happens when those 'educated' beyond their means
eggheads, who manage to get the people who command armies and bureaucracies, and those government timeservers and paper pushers bureaucrats, and who together foolishly imagine they can ever know enough to "properly" allocate resources, make use of those timeservers and paper pushers bureaucrats -- and the implicit, and eventually explicit, threat to unleash those armies on you if you dare to dissent -- to attempt, one more dreary time, to "properly" allocate resources. Including you and your time and effort.


President Obama signs Executive Order allowing for control over all US resources

Executive Order -- National Defense Resources Preparedness

... unfortunately, I and my family also have to live in that unfolding nightmare, and we neither desire nor deserve it, as you do.

Look, she *is* a ...

Look, she *is* a slut ... and if you're "offended" by my blunt and accurate use of the term, well, frankly, My Dear, I don't give a damn.

If you are "offended" by the truth, then you are part of the problem, you are part of the on-going destruction of America and Western Civilization in general.

The "liberals" and libertarians (and pseudo-conservatives) are not actually offended because Rush Limbaugh called a slut a slut -- they do it themselves, in praise! -- no, no, no! they are "offended" because he, compromised in this regard as he happens to be, dared to mock one of the logical end-points of the so-called "Sexual Revolution".

In which I learn that I'm really a Democrat

... or, perhaps, I was simply 'Acorned'.

When I went to the polling station yesterday, their listing claimed that I had requested a Democratic Party ballot in the last primary.

I have never in my life registered as a Democrat nor requested a ballot for their primary.

So, is this general governmental incompetence, raised to some new level (for, in changing my registration from 'R' to 'D', *someone* had to take some initiative)? Or, did some Democratic Party affiliated “activist” somehow change my registration?

A few weeks ago, the Board of Elections sent me a card about the polling station now being ‘here’, rather than ‘there’ (it was actually moved a couple of years ago, due to accessibility issues with the old location). At the same time, they also sent cards for three other (alleged) voters (allegedly) living at my address.

At the time, I just figured that the Board of Elections hadn’t purged the rolls … in 30 or more years. But now I’m thinking that some Dem “activist” has used my address to register fictitious voters.

One simply cannot help but wonder: What *is* it with Democrats and vote fraud?