Post #239,512
12/27/05 10:57:47 AM
|
Ditto.
Need our resident scientist back. :-)
|
Post #239,602
12/27/05 7:38:17 PM
|
He was made to feel too-heretical
and excoriated for his excesses - despite his obv brilliance elsewhere. So he Liked the fucking 'South' and its bucolic ways of eld - - - So fucking What !?
This heretic also misses his Genuine wide-ranging talents, curiosity, exploration well beyond the safe Usual Stuff of Murican kultural afflictions; I could always just elide or.. joust, over the few areas where I found self in clear opposition. Others chose to fulminate - it's so much easier. You get to practice all those stupid one-liners, as if they meant Something.
(I, of course - can't possibly know which artless Fuck-Off! in aggregation, prompted, OK-I-Will; epidermis comes in so many thicknesses.)
I don't want to reread some of the hounding-out posts; that would remind me that I almost joined him, in solidarity and against pecksniffery + vitriolic Go Aways of the pedestrian kind. Ross is not an asshole-StarMan comic fantasy, but he was dissed as-if. In my experience, 'Brilliance' rarely appears.. without warts, too. You have to accept both - or lose out.
'Our' loss .. whoever 'we' 'were/are' collectively [??]
Pity.
|
Post #239,642
12/28/05 3:54:08 AM
|
Hounded, my arse.
He wasn't hounded anywhere, Ash.
He was an objectionable knobber at times, was called on it, and took his ball and went home.
Peter
[link|http://www.no2id.net/|Don't Let The Terrorists Win]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Home]
Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
|
Post #239,648
12/28/05 4:43:02 AM
|
Maybe OK for the rilly-short form.
I agree on 'objectionable'.
(I also concede that not everyone must weight that, as I might.)
I deem that his being often-enough Interesting quite outweighed his periodic weirdness (whereas in another case.. that ratio was so far reversed, I was happy to see disappearance.) Even when I disagreed 100% with his thesis, he was never (rarely?) boring. The incongruous rants could have been left un-baited, if others felt similarly.
Obviously enough did not (feel similarly.) Hounded isn't far off the mark. We just disagree on whether we're 'better off' without that cantankerous voice.
(And it may be moot anyway; he may well have had other reasons. C'est la vie, etc. We rarely discover any real 'whys' of homo-sap behaviour..)
I.
|
Post #239,649
12/28/05 5:03:23 AM
|
Re: Maybe OK for the rilly-short form.
I didn't say anything about whether we're better off or not without him. On balance, mu.
Hounded IS far off the mark. Sometimes, everyone telling you you're wrong isn't "groupthink" or "harrassment" or "hounding", it's "being wrong".
Ross is a clever bloke who, like all of us, periodically talks bollocks. He didn't like it when we told him that the bollocks he was talking was, actually, bollocks. (Debian, women, etc)
So he buggered off.
If you want to paint this community as having run him out of town, so to speak, you will not do it without me standing up and saying "No. That is not what happened".
Peter
[link|http://www.no2id.net/|Don't Let The Terrorists Win]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Home]
Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
|
Post #239,651
12/28/05 7:40:57 AM
|
Yep, Peter's right: Now it's you, Ashton...
...who are talking bollocks.
And if you can't admit that, then you'll be told this again and again, every time you talk this particular kind of bollocks.
(And if *that* makes *you* want to take your ball and go home... Then good riddance to you, too. Just because Ross happened to be a buddy of yours does not, in fact, mean that he couldn't be at least as loony as Norm, at times.)
[link|mailto:MyUserId@MyISP.CountryCode|Christian R. Conrad]
(I live in Finland, and my e-mail in-box is at the Saunalahti company.)
Yes Mr. Garrison, genetic engineering lets us correct God's horrible, horrible mistakes, like German people. - [link|http://maxpages.com/southpark2k/Episode_105|Mr. Hat]
|
Post #239,680
12/28/05 11:43:43 AM
|
You're both wrong! Certs is a rectal suppository!
(Note to CRC: allusion to stateside 1960s ad campaign for "breath mint") (armchair psychology follows)
—or I could be wrong, but I never thought that Ross was "hounded" out of here, or for that matter fled because he couldn't take the heat. True, he often found himself a minority of one, and deservedly so, rhapsodizing about the bucolic antebellum South (although I suspect that many of the dismissive responses, my own included, were delivered with less thought than the provocative posts deserved) or lapsing into that snarling misogyny to which he was lamentably prone. I'm inclined to believe, though, that his withdrawal from these parts was probably of a piece with a broader retreat from online engagement—something I find intermittently, albeit briefly, necessary for my own stability, and deSitter's nerves are tuned to a higher pitch, and hence the more tautly strung, than mine own. Personal circumstances permitting, he may be disposed at some point to rejoin us (I would be prepared to pay admission to see him spar with bionerd), or it may be that he looks back on IWT as I do on unfiltered Camels: a youthful indulgence wistfully recalled but best not revisited. I hope for the former: at his best his discourses were dazzling, and his posts reliably struck sparks off the other members.
And while it grieves me to differ with our Teuton of the Tundra, I respectfully submit that when we speak of lunacy no one here, not Ross at his most eccentric, not Ashton at his most obscurely oracular, is worthy to be mentioned in the same breath with He Who Must Not Be Named (And Didn't He Have a Lot of Them), who fortunately remains sui generis in the history of these precincts.
cordially,
Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.
|
Post #239,688
12/28/05 12:07:02 PM
|
I think he needed a bigger playpen.
Ross likes attention. Recall that on many occasions he started, er, controversial discussions just to "stir the pot". That's fine, up to a point.
I also recall that he was talking about getting a scientific discussion board going here. I don't think anything came of that.
I think Ross just needed, or thought he needed, a bigger forum to get more out of it. He posted here a lot - 12639, still #3 on the list. (Plus, there are his other handles.) I think he came to view us as not providing enough of a challenge. That's fine - I know I wasn't. :-/
You may be right that he simply decided to take a breather from on-line discussions, too. I would certainly welcome him back, but wouldn't let fear of driving him off keep me from keeping me from arguing with him. He's a big boy who knows how things are.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
|
Post #239,697
12/28/05 12:43:36 PM
|
Sounds about right to me
When you get to a point you pretty much know what everyone's going to have to say about a subject, it gets stale. And the things he was really interested in, there just aren't enough people here who could keep up with the math or physics to make it interesting.
===
Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats].
[link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
|
Post #239,695
12/28/05 12:34:14 PM
|
Close...
Elements of both - he wasn't enjoying himself as much here as well. He was getting agitated when he posted, and didn't need that in his life. FWIW, he does miss us. He may be back someday - but I really doubt he will ever participate to the same degree as he did.
Imric's Tips for Living
- Paranoia Is a Survival Trait
- Pessimists are never disappointed - but sometimes, if they are very lucky, they can be pleasantly surprised...
- Even though everyone is out to get you, it doesn't matter unless you let them win.
|
Nothing is as simple as it seems in the beginning,
As hopeless as it seems in the middle,
Or as finished as it seems in the end.
|
|
Post #239,700
12/28/05 1:29:18 PM
|
Which would be a good thing
FWIW, he does miss us. He may be back someday - but I really doubt he will ever participate to the same degree as he did. I would love to see him back. But if he hasn't learned that there is a point when you should just drop an argument because it isn't going anyplace, he is just going to get himself upset again. Jay
|
Post #239,713
12/28/05 4:24:12 PM
|
Tell him the old Marxist says hello and wishes well.
bcnu,
Mikem
It would seem, therefore, that the three human impulses embodied in religion are fear, conceit, and hatred. The purpose of religion, one might say, is to give an air of respectibility to these passions. -- Bertrand Russell
|
Post #239,714
12/28/05 4:25:42 PM
|
Will do!
Imric's Tips for Living
- Paranoia Is a Survival Trait
- Pessimists are never disappointed - but sometimes, if they are very lucky, they can be pleasantly surprised...
- Even though everyone is out to get you, it doesn't matter unless you let them win.
|
Nothing is as simple as it seems in the beginning,
As hopeless as it seems in the middle,
Or as finished as it seems in the end.
|
|
Post #239,732
12/28/05 5:59:37 PM
|
Wish him a happy Year of the Dog too.
|
Post #240,120
1/2/06 2:33:34 PM
|
If I quit IWT, would he come back?
I still wonder at times if I wasn't the cause. And I really don't know how you all feel about me, but if he would come back to you if I left, I shouldn't I leave?
Brenda
"I'll rock the darn boat all I want to, and if it's meant to stay afloat, then it will. If not, then we'll just all go down with the bloody ship!"
|
Post #240,122
1/2/06 2:57:28 PM
|
He's a big boy. You didn't chase him away.
|
Post #240,123
1/2/06 3:09:50 PM
|
doubt he really gives a rats ass
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 50 years. meep
|
Post #240,127
1/2/06 3:29:27 PM
|
No
The world doesn't revolve around you!
|
Post #240,137
1/2/06 4:54:20 PM
|
..but we'll always have Paris (new thread)
Created as new thread #240136 titled [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=240136|..but we'll always have Paris]
|
Post #240,231
1/3/06 1:21:48 PM
|
No
The world doesn't revolve around you! That isn't at all what I meant. I just remember the private e-mails we had exchanged and how he couldn't stand me and also vocalized it on here... I still wonder if I wasn't a major factor as to why he left. It was just a thought. Brenda
"I'll rock the darn boat all I want to, and if it's meant to stay afloat, then it will. If not, then we'll just all go down with the bloody ship!"
|
Post #240,141
1/2/06 5:32:06 PM
1/2/06 5:32:37 PM
|
Never mind
Edit: Whoops, was thinking of somebody else who is no longer here.
When somebody asks you to trade your freedom for security, it isn't your security they're talking about.
|
Post #240,190
1/3/06 4:15:34 AM
|
And here I thought you were at least thinking of himSelf...
|
