Re: The guy who yelled "liar" at Obama

On Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:06:59 -0400, Gary <not@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Fri, 11 Sep 2009 06:30:43 -0700, Rumpelstiltskin
<PleaseDoNotReplyByEmail@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:40:22 -0400, Gary <not@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:20:46 -0700, Rumpelstiltskin
<PleaseDoNotReplyByEmail@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:16:57 -0400, Gary <not@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
<snip>


I'm going through a period in my life when I'm not so sure I trust
doctors. It's not a pleasant feeling. But then it[s probably
all my fault. Ask yourself a question. Why do healthy people go
to doctors ?




I would share your distrust of doctors except that I have Kaiser,
so I know the doctor isn't thinking that he has to make the next
payment on his yacht as he's creating my bill.

Every year -- in the name of preventative medicine -- I have a
physical. Every year my doctor wants me to check myself into the
hospital. Why ? So I can stretch out -- face down -- on a
gurney, be sedated and then have some guy stick a six foot garden
hose up my ass. But, but, but .....I feel fine.

I have something to make you more paranoid than that, though.
Emo Philips noted that he always thought the brain was the most
amazing organ in the body, but then he asked himself "What is
telling me that?"

Want to be even more paranoid ? On the same general subject -- what
is the one thing humans have that no other animal has ? Is it
intelligence ? No. I read that it's a scientific fact that a
parrot has the same intelligence as a four year old child. The one
thing is language. Humans have a language with which can than
communicate with each other. It is the language that allows the
transmission of -- and accumulation of knowledge. Without language
there can be no abstract thought.



Don't underestimate the importance of hands (with
opposable thumbs). There's a Gary Larson cartoon of
a pair of cows sitting on a sofa looking nervously at a
ringing telephone. One of them says "There it goes
again, and here we sit without opposable thumbs."

The opposable thumb enabled man to "do" what his linguistic
intelligence imagined. Without the language to instruct -- and
only using man's natural impulses -- the thumb would have only been
used to increase the ecstasy of masturbation.



The question is which came first. I think it's
generally agreed that the opposable thumb
came first. It's plenty useful before intelligence.
Crows can make tools, and they would have
found an opposable thumb helpful for that.


We wouldn't have much of a civilization if we all
had the intelligence of four year old children. Most
of the progress of humanity comes from remarkably
few people, such as Isaac Newton or Thomas
Edison. The rest of us have enough intelligence
to hang on for the ride, and the language to transmit
the new knowledge from those very few people
down to succeeding generations through the ages.

Very true. We are where we are because -- as Newton put it -- we
"stand on the shoulders of giants". Why should other animals be any
different ?

Without hands, it might well be argued that there
would be insufficient evolutionary pressure to give
enough benefit to language to compensate for the
energy cost of the brain structure required to
operate it.

That could well be true. But I still find it something to wonder
about -- why can't other advanced mammals communicate as we do ?
There has to be something there beside a theory of evolution.


There is nothing other than the theory of evolution.
Everything else is wishful thinking. It's "misguided"
wishful thinking because Natural Selection is far
more noble than any insultingly petty and unworthy
god.

I'm going to stop in at the library today to try to
pick up Dawkins' "River out of Eden". I've started
to wonder lately if I ever actually read that book.
I've heard so much about it, and I know what it's
about, that I thought I had read it, but it's not in
my collection, so maybe I haven't,




What could whales do with language?
They couldn't build cities or arrange for storing krill
in barns or refrigerators in high season for use in
low season. They'd get some benefit from language,
for sure, but would it be enough beyond what they
can do without it to compensate for the additional
energy it required?



Without abstract thought -- all we have is memory. Memory is that
ability that brings birds to my feeder after having been away for
several days. Imagine if birds could communicate as we do -- who
would be feeding (and eating) who.

If a bird is that smart -- how smart is a dog or cat ? Lucky for us
they do not have a language with which to organize. Which also
means that we are eating animals that would be registered voters if
they could only talk.


Despite the ability to talk, there are humans and
whole cultures that aren't intellectually advanced
significantly further than cats and dogs, IMV,
though they do still get the advantage of
remarkable individuals.

That can only be caused by one of two things. Genetic inferiorty --
or an inferior culure. As a son of the South, I was taught it is
the former. As I read more, I think it is the latter.


I think it's the latter too, as do most people. What
slaveowner of the old South would have thought a
black man could become president of the United
States? He couldn't afford to think that, because
it would utterly annihilate his whole moral self-image
and reveal him to be a despicable villain.

I find it hard to believe that modern gang members
in the ghetto are capable of anything better, but I
don't trust my instinct about that. Probably they
could be better if they could get out of or improve
the society in which they're entrenched. The Irish
of Boston truly were barbarians at first.



One of those might be,
IMV of course, the Southern Baptist culture in
which you're ensconced.

Come on Joe Wilson. Let's be civil.


I didn't say anything there that I haven't said
before. Unlike human "races", I think there is
something fundamentally and incurably wrong
with theistic religion: all theistic religion. The
Southern Baptist religion is about the worst of a
lousy and disgusting human weakness, a
weakness that symbolizes even when not the
actual root cause of what is most "wrong" with
humans IMV. Religions that justify actually
enslaving and torturing people are worse, but
the Southern Baptist religion comes closer than
most of the surviving Christian sects, as made
manifest in its attitude toward gay people.

I'm Jeff Wilson, actually Geoff(rey) Wilson,
originally Geoff(rey) (Malcolm) Arrowsmith. I like
"Joe" though. I'd rather be "Joe" than "Jeff".
I like "Geoff" better than "Jeff", for a different
reason than why I like "Joe", but I like "Joe"
better than either. I just picked the "Jeff"
spelling because "Geoff" looks too classy to go
with the very unclassy (IMV) "Wilson", and also
because I got tired of uneducated Americans
who had gotten so used to their own illiterate
ancestors' spelling error that they couldn't figure
out how to pronounce "Geoff". Like Maria
Antonia, I hated it that my name got changed
against my will.

I'd have liked "Zack" or "Spike" even better
than "Joe". I never did have spiked hair though.
I did have a ducktail kept in place with gobs of
Brylcreem back in high school, in one of my
feeble attempts to be a successful juvenile
delinquent. Being a real juvenile delinquent
unfortunately wasn't in my blood. I really wanted
to be a "bad boy" but it just wasn't in me.

Even if I could run through life all over again
which I would dearly like to do because life is
so sweet, I still don't think I could be a
successful juvenile delinquent. I think too
much.

I'm sure all the letters in "Geoffrey" were
originally pronounced. Chaucer and his
contemporaries pronounced all the letters in
"knight" just as modern Germans pronounce
all the letters in "knecht" which is where
"knight" comes from. In "Geoffrey", the
pronunciation would include pronouncing
the "o" and "y" separately. The "g" would
be pronounced as if one were ejecting an
ort blocking one's breathing tubes, or
having an alarming and possibly fatal attack.
That's the way "g" is still pronounced in
modern Dutch. It's why Dutch people
don't know who Americans are talking
about if they mention the artist "Van Go".
The "o" is hard, and "G" and "gh" in
"Gogh" should be pronounced in such a
way that it would make your hand
instinctively spring to your dirk if you were
carrying one. It's also why "Rembrandt
van Rijn" is known outside Holland as
"Rembrandt". "Rijn" is pronounced
something like "KKHR", followed by "eigh"
as in "eight", and finishing up with a
normal (to English ears) "n".






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I thought about "further" above, versus "farther",
and found the following in my online dictionary at:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/farther

Usage Note: Since the Middle English period many writers have used
farther and further interchangeably. According to a relatively recent
rule, however, farther should be reserved for physical distance and
further for nonphysical, metaphorical advancement. Thus 74 percent of
the Usage Panel prefers farther in the sentence If you are planning to
drive any farther than Ukiah, you'd better carry chains, and 64
percent prefers further in the sentence We won't be able to answer
these questions until we are further along in our research. In many
cases, however, the distinction is not easy to draw. If we speak of a
statement that is far from the truth, for example, we should also
allow the use of farther in a sentence such as Nothing could be
farther from the truth. But Nothing could be further from the truth is
so well established as to seem a fixed expression.

Their example of "further" in the sentence "Nothing could be
further from the truth", justified by its antiquity, might be regarded
as a linguistic "fossil", like "kith" in "kith and kin" or "run" in
"Tom, Tom, the piper's son, stole a pig and away he run."


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