Re: RGP Poll: Rudest Person on RGP

Uncle Al!

Okay so you're Elasticus. You learn something every day.

You ever read up on his Eotvos experiment? It's pretty damn good stuff. I
feel cool that I've even read some of Al's posts.

On Aug 12 2009 5:33 PM, ramashiva wrote:

On Aug 12, 1:11 pm, "Mark B [Diputsur]" <diput...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
XaQ Morphy - vs - Mrs Irish (Beafaroni) Mike
             ----------------------

A tough one, but at least this poll won't need a second round!
What thinks you RGP?  XaQ or Beefy?

Beafaroni - 1
Morphy - 0

Huh? WTF? Morphy isn't even rude. Not suffering fools and idiots is
not being rude.

The guy is relentlessly on topic. He starts a lot of poker threads,
and he participates in pretty much every poker thead. He is one of
the few posters left on the newsgroup who actually knows something
about poker.

He never, to my knowledge, participates in political threads. Anyone
have a clue what his political opinions are? I sure don't. Since he
is one of the smartest people on the newsgroup, I like to think he is
a liberal. But a lot of these technogeeks are right-wing
libertarians, so that is also a possibility.

Your initial matchup should be Bell Dingbat versus Bea Foroni. You
should match up the winner against Travel. The quality of the
candidates declines rapidly from there, but posters like Pickle, Irish
Mike, risky, and Clave should also be considered.

Speaking of Clave, I have an outside the box suggestion for you --
Clave's hero, Uncle Al, who is technically an RGP poster, since I have
seen at least one post by him in a thread crossposted to sci.physics.
I have been fascinated by the kerfuffle between eleaticus and Uncle Al
about Einstein's special theory of relativity, so I have been lurking
a lot at sci.physics recently. A lot of the discussions are way over
my head, since my formal education in the physical sciences consists
of two semesters of physics and two semesters of chemistry taken 45
years ago. The math is no problem for me, but I just don't have the
understanding of modern physics necessary to understand what these
guys are talking about. This is true even though I have been an
amateur astronomer all my life, and I religiously read Scientific
American for many years. Also, two of my main interests are global
warming and peak oil, and I spend quite a bit of time reading pretty
technical discussions of these subjects on websites like www.theoildrum.com
and www.realclimate.org.

But many of the threads on sci.physics are easily understandable by
anyone with an educated layman's understanding of the physical
sciences. For example, I read a fascinating discussion yesterday
about why water pipes burst in cold weather. It is also refreshing to
read a newsgroup where pretty much everybody is intelligent and well-
educated.

Anyway, back to Uncle Al. Why is he so rude? Well, most of his posts
consist of the following --
__________________

<snip crap>

Idiot.
__________________

This is rude on so many levels. The <snip crap> is extremely rude,
IMO. If you want to indicate snippage, fine. But to snip and then
negatively characterize what you have snipped is profoundly
intellectually dishonest. It's crap? How about some explanation of
why it is crap?

When Uncle Al does deign to explain to a poster the error of his ways,
he generally responds with a few sentences of cryptic scientific
jargon which are incomprehensible to me. Then he usually gives a long
list of references to academic journals. I guess the other poster is
supposed to go read all these literature cites to find out why he is
wrong.

Anyway, when Uncle Al steps outside his area of expertise, he is
spectacularly clueless. Two examples --

Petroleum will be gone by 2050. If he posted this nonsense on The Oil
Drum, he would be laughed into oblivion. If he tried to argue with
the geologists, petroleum engineers, and energy scientists who post
there, they would bury him. These guys are every bit as well educated
as Uncle Al, and they know what they are talking about.

Social Security and Medicare will implode by 2015. I kid you not.
Evidently Uncle Al is a completely whacked out right-wing nutcase who
doesn't bother to apply his obviously considerable skills in critical
thinking and logical analysis to any subject other than physics.

That's my case for Uncle Al.

I have given you three great places to hang out if you enjoy reading
discussions among intelligent, well-educated people who know whereof
they speak --

sci.physics

The Oil Drum

Real Climate

By the way, I am crossposting this to sci.physics. This is my first
cross post ever, other than when I have replied to a post which was
already cross posted.



William Coleman (ramashiva)


--
Voted RGP's Stupidest Poster on 3/22/09

"BART [Bay Area Rapid Transit] is rather new." - Jerry Sturdivant chiming
in on how little he knows about a train system that's been operational
since 1972

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