Because You Deserve No Less

An open thread, that is - our second in 11 years. Feel free to share links of possible interest and then bicker about them.

Our first attempt, a moment of great daring and historic import, included testicle-based snacks, toilet paper shanks, the political flatulence of Patrick Stewart, and whether or not you should clean under the sofa.  

If all else fails, you can always poke through the reheated series and greatest hits.

Comments

[Captain Nemo]

You’d better mingle, youth the place up a bit.

So I can stop sitting on the Stool of Shame, then? Good. It's so awkward to sit on. That wonky fourth leg makes it quite uncomfortable.

[David]

Of course, it will be we elderly who are here at closing time left with all the youthful, yet somehow unpaid, bar tabs.

I’ve always said this place needs a wiser, more mature, more seasoned clientele.

[ Hangs large, illuminated “No Skateboards” sign. ]

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...'attacks' have 'rendered her unemployable in academia'...

Ordinarily that would be seen as a positive thing, but a bit sad that Miss Shepard would actually want a job in the Clown Quarter.

[WTP]

I’ll dim the lighting around the elderly.

As if the in-and-out weak wifi back here by the Gents isn't bad enough.

[Chester Draws]

I spend most of my non-family time with teenagers. Does that count?

It does mean that I'm usually up with what they think like. What interests them. What excites them.

It's not pretty, mind you.

[Fred the Fourth]

In my business I work with startup founders who are seeking investors. As a matter of course such investments require "term sheets" detailing ownership, rights, governance, and several other, mostly boilerplate, items.
Experience has taught me to caution entrepreneurs to confine their lawyers to strictly legal aspects, and to keep the lawyers away from business issues. If this is not done, both sides end up exceeding their legal budgets, for no benefit to anyone except a law firms top line.
"Bleak House" should be mandatory study in High schools.

[Pogonip]

Damn it, David, all the lights at this table suddenly went out! I can’t find my pickled egg! Where’s my refund?

[ftumch]

[Checks “No Skateboards” sign]

Won't be needing this then.

[R. Sherman]

Experience has taught me to caution entrepreneurs to confine their lawyers to strictly legal aspects...

No question that's good advice, and I personally would never involve myself in areas outside my expertise. The problem is, there is so much overlap among multiple professions, e.g. law and accountancy regarding tax aspects of a business, that such distinctions are unclear at times. Add to that, the very human desire discussed upthread to avoid spending money on upfront advice, and you get a situation where professionals wind up talking about stuff they shouldn't.

[WTP]

The problem is, there is so much overlap among multiple professions, e.g. law

Yes. But this is the problem. The more laws we have the more the law encroaches on every other profession, every other aspect of life. Laws have accumulated to the point beyond the ability of anyone to keep track of them. And thus they cannot all be enforced as there's nowhere near enough resources. Consequently, selective enforcement cannot be avoided. It eventually turns into a big power game and we will shortly have legislated ourselves into anarchy.

[R. Sherman]

Yes. But this is the problem.

Then, it's resolved. We have a roundtable with you, Fred IV & I exercising plenary authority to dispose of these issues as we see fit.

Query, who plays the "Cathy Newman 'So what you're saying is . . .'" role?

[Fred the Fourth]

I'll waive my customary fee (Macallan) if we can get Helen Mirren and Judi Dench to participate.
I'm drawing a blank on the "Cathy Newman" casting, though.

[Zionist Overlord #73]

I'm drawing a blank on the "Cathy Newman" casting, though.

A lobster, obviously.

[Fred the Fourth]

Look, let's take a page from the creators of "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome".
In the casting meeting someone is supposed to have said "what we want is someone wild and intense. You know, like Tina Turner."
To which the obvious (and actual) response was "Well, let's call Tina Turner."

[Rich Rostrom]

Pogonip @ June 12, 2018 at 16:30:
What’s hoplophobia, the fear of bunny rabbits?

Fear of weapons. You may recall that the common warrior of classical Greece, who marched in a phalanx bearing spear and shield, was a hoplites, from hopla, "arms".

[lotocoti]

That wonky fourth leg makes it quite uncomfortable.
It's purely coincidental that one drinks' coaster isn't enough to fix the wobble and two, too many.

[Governor Squid]

Sadiq Khan is what happens when, in order to seem virtuous, progressive, non-judgemental, anti-racist, etc., you decide to elect politicians based on their membership of certain minority or identity groups rather than their competence.

I sure am glad we Americans steered clear of any such mistakes!

[Pogonip]

You have me, how much more wisdom do you need?

[PiperPaul]

Ah yes, clackers. I believe in the Great White North they were known as Fuddle Duddle Balls.

[R. Sherman]

For the seniors among us. We'll be standing in the corner, long black coats and sunglasses on, being completely indifferent to your existence.

[Hopp Singg]

Of course, it will be we elderly who are here at closing time left with all the youthful, yet somehow unpaid, bar tabs.

The govt debt they inherit might balance that out somewhat.

[WTP]

Then, it's resolved. We have a roundtable with you, Fred IV & I exercising plenary authority to dispose of these issues as we see fit.

I'm in. But don't count on that Judi Dench showing her, uh, face. She owes me money. I had no idea she was going to spend it on a tattoo.

As for the seniors among us, I did like the cover version as well.

[Ted S., Catskill Mtns., NY, USA]

Of course, it will be we elderly who are here at closing time left with all the youthful, yet somehow unpaid, bar tabs.

I thought the elderly came in to eat at 4:30 PM and left by 5:30.

[R. Sherman]

I thought the elderly came in to eat at 4:30 PM and left by 5:30.

Of course.

But that's so we can save ourselves for the truly rollicking stuff later on in the evening. You know. People reciting various classical aphorisms to a Barry White soundtrack with a Barry White voice: "Veni, Vidi, Vici, Baby."

Plus, those flaming shooters aren't going to down themselves.

Young people are pikers.

[Pogonip]

...Cui bono...that’s what I feel when I lay down next to you baby...i’m filled with love, and I wonder, cui bono? Me, or the meter reader?

[Fred the Fourth]

Dench owes you?
Damn. I owe her for her last stint (lovely word, that) as GM.
I suppose it's to much to hope that someone here owes me, right? Net of my bar tab, of course.
Hey, anyone wanna buy a duplicate of the key to the upstairs hottub?

[Adam D]

Years ago a thread on here took a turn into explaining how intelligent people (generally on the left) can look at the world and get things so wrong. I would love to read it again it was genuinely illuminating.

Does it ring any bells??

[Darleen]

5 ... 4 ...3 ...2...AVERT YOUR EYES!

[Hal]

As a consequence, you have very "educated" young attorneys who can't do anything and wind up clogging up the system with crap.

At a company I was at, a lawyer would come by on occasions to give lectures, and at one point she had a very definite point about newly minted JDs. Something to the effect of Passing the bar and all that does not make you a lawyer. When I hire these people, they have no idea what they're doing, it's going to take me at least two years of training in how to do things before my firm starts getting any benefits . . .

[Hal]

Years ago a thread on here took a turn into explaining how intelligent people (generally on the left) can look at the world and get things so wrong. I would love to read it again it was genuinely illuminating.

. . . which one?

---If you can remember any particular phrases, that might give you some search terms to work with . . .

[David]

Years ago a thread on here took a turn into explaining how intelligent people (generally on the left) can look at the world and get things so wrong. I would love to read it again it was genuinely illuminating.

As that’s a recurrent theme here, touched on literally hundreds of times, you’d have to narrow it down, at least somewhat. As Hal says, some particular phrase or subject matter would help. Was it one of the dozen or so threads you’ve taken part in? An Elsewhere post? Do any subject tags come to mind?

[Nikw211]

Years ago a thread on here took a turn into explaining how intelligent people (generally on the left) can look at the world and get things so wrong.

you’d have to narrow it down, at least somewhat

Obviously, I don't know which ones in particular, but these two both seem likely candidates:

It Pays To Be Unobvious

From which comes this extract from a post by Professor Jere Surber:

In many arts subjects, especially those tethered only loosely to evidence, logic or practical verification, there’s often pressure to avoid the obvious and prosaic, even when the obvious and prosaic is true. The obligation to be unobvious, if only for the benefit of one’s academic peers, may help explain the more fanciful assertions from some practitioners of the liberal arts.

And this from a review of Thomas Sowell’s Intellectuals and Society by Theodore Dalrymple:

Intellectuals, like everyone else, live and work in a marketplace. In order to get noticed they must say things which have not been said before, or at least say them in a different manner. No one is likely to obtain many plaudits for the rather obvious, indeed self-evident, thought that a street robber cannot commit street robberies while he is in prison. But an intellectual who first demonstrates that the cause of an increase in street robbery is the increase in the amount of property that law-abiding pedestrians have on them as they walk in the streets is likely to be hailed, at least until the next idea comes along. Thus, while there are no penalties for being foolish, there are severe penalties (at least in career terms) for being obvious.

And speaking of Thomas Sowell:

Consequential knowledge

In which David remarks (amongst other things):

Oddly enough - or not oddly at all - Marx was also fond of apocalyptic scenarios. (“I will wander godlike and victorious through the ruins of the world,” etc.)

In the same general vein, I can highly recommend the following work by Daniel Kalder known in Europe as Dictator Literature: A History of Despots Through Their Writing and in North America as The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy

I should mention that the author is a friend of mine, it's true, and I was a reader for several early drafts as it was in development, but I hope that does not put anyone off - I think it's a fascinating read.

[David]

Years ago a thread on here...

If it helps, these are the threads you’ve commented in, as Adam D, in reverse chronological order:

Elsewhere (272).

Shakedown, Down Under.

This Is Sparta.

The Lamentations Of The Women.

Elsewhere (157).

At Every Turn.

Elsewhere (136).

Elsewhere (135).

Elsewhere (115).

Friday Ephemera.

Elsewhere (105).

Elsewhere (99).

Will No-One Think Of The Artists?

Actually, poking through old threads isn’t entirely devoid of fun. For instance, I’d forgotten about the ephemera item, a piece by Robert Entman and Francis Seymour, in which Close Encounters is denounced as “a fascist film, capitalist propaganda.”

Dear God, I’ve been doing this forever.

[Captain Nemo]

Dear God, I’ve been doing this forever.

Have you always been a blogger/commentator/writer? You don't have to answer if you don't want to - I'm just curious.

[David]

Have you always been a blogger/commentator/writer?

I used to be a freelance writer (Times, Observer, various journals, etc.) Before that, I ran a small record label with The Other Half. Before that, I ran the UK arm of someone else’s slightly bigger record label. Before that…

We’ll be here all day.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Meanwhile, back to the issue of too many men riding bicycles, we find that roads are killing women cyclists.

Xavier Brice, at Sustrans, believes city planners are to blame. “Fifty-one per cent of the UK population is female, yet most of our cities are failing to design roads and streets for women to cycle,” he says. It cannot help that women remain under-represented among the transport planners and engineers who design our streets.

I am still wondering how, exactly, a road designed for women cyclists would be different than one "designed for men", as this bozo apparently thinks is now the case. It would obviously by misogynistic/paternalistic/colonialist/etc for me to suggest that perhaps the women are just crappy cyclists.

[David]

Leftist academia versus hardcore fisking.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Meanwhile, at Netflix studios, don't look at me !

At least not for more than five seconds, you, you, masher.

[Clam]

in which Close Encounters is denounced as “a fascist film, capitalist propaganda.”

*falls down link rabbit hole*

[Acme]

Netflix film crews 'banned from looking at each other for longer than five seconds' in #metoo crackdown

Given that filmmakers are full-time professional peoplewatchers, that rule could cramp their style if taken literally, or with the awareness that somebody could take it literally against you. Not that I feel sorry for filmmakers.

It pays to be unobvious

Clever Sillies

The over-use of abstract reasoning may be most obvious in the social domain, where normal humans are richly equipped with evolved psychological mechanisms both for here-and-now interactions (e.g. rapidly reading emotions from facial expression, gesture and posture, and speech intonation) and for ‘strategic’ modelling of social interactions to understand predict and manipulate the behaviour of others. Social strategies deploy inferred knowledge about the dispositions, motivations and intentions of others. When the most intelligent people over-ride the social intelligence systems and apply generic, abstract and systematic reasoning of the kind which is enhanced among higher IQ people, they are ignoring an ‘expert system’ in favour of a non-expert system.

... My hunch is that it is this kind of IQ-advertisement which has led to the most intelligent people in modern societies having ideas about social phenomena that are not just randomly incorrect (due to inappropriately misapplying abstract analysis) but are systematically wrong. I am talking of the phenomenon known as political correctness (PC) in which foolish and false ideas have become moralistically-enforced among the ruling intellectual elite. And these ideas have invaded academic, political and social discourse. Because while the stereotypical nutty professor in the hard sciences is a brilliant scientist but silly about everything else; the stereotypical nutty professor social scientist or humanities professor is not just silly about ‘everything else’, but also silly in their professional work.

[David]

*falls down link rabbit hole*

Heh. I got as far as Laurie and the class-war zombies. Then, fearing madness, I crawled my way back.

But the Close Encounters essay is particularly awful and often factually wrong, though typically of its type, in that it repeatedly ignores the obvious intended effect, and the stated motives of the director and composer, in favour of shoehorning in rote Marxoid assumptions that bear little if any relationship to what’s actually happening on the screen.

[jabrwok]

Bollocks!

[Hal]

Before that…

We’ll be here all day.

Oooh, fascinating . . .

So what was Arthur Wellesley like, meeting him in person?

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

But the Close Encounters essay is particularly awful...

The final encounter also condemns linear communications, rational thought, and independent science, as fascists usually do.

Wait a minute, "...condemns linear communications, rational thought, and independent science..." ? That describes the Clown Quarter and SJWs in general, so this guy is saying they really are the fascists ?

[Hal]

Netflix film crews 'banned from looking at each other for longer than five seconds' in #metoo crackdown

Given that filmmakers are full-time professional peoplewatchers, that rule could cramp their style if taken literally,

Some of the links need to get updated---been a bit swamped, gimme a few weeks---but there is a solution with rather useful details . . .

[Hal]

A handy wildlife guide: A Survey Of British Mammals

[David]

Wait a minute, “...condemns linear communications, rational thought, and independent science...”?

Oh, it’s dire shite, as these things so often are. To pick an obvious example...

During the final encounter, members of the ‘reception crew’ explain that the visitors are “trying to teach us a basic tonal vocabulary… It’s the first day at school.” We’re then twice told about, and shown, computers deciphering this intended mutual language and taking over the ‘conversation’ as it exceeds the ability of the human operator. The whole point of the scene is to convey an accelerating rational communication – a language comprehensible to computers - in a way that’s expressive and exciting to a general cinema audience. And all of which rather implies precisely the qualities that our Marxist Mr Seymour claims aren’t present.

Because of all the “fascism,” apparently.

[Captain Nemo]

Before that… We’ll be here all day.

Heh. Not what I expected - I had you down as a dissident and disaffected academic.

[David]

I had you down as a dissident and disaffected academic.

You take that back. You take that back right now.

[Captain Nemo]

Okay, I take it back! *slinks off to a dark corner of the bar and tries to look small and insignificant*

[Spiny Norman]

R.Sherman,

We'll be standing in the corner, long black coats and sunglasses on, being completely indifferent to your existence.

Well, okay. Fine then.

[Adam]

Breaking news from the Berkeley (CA) City Council: There are too many humans so we need to find a way to "humanely" depopulate the earth to save "God's Creation"

Excuse me for showing my white male privilege, but I thought humankind was God's Creation. Guess not.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/06/13/berkeley-declares-climate-emergency-worse-than-world-war-ii-demands-humane-population-control.html

[Governor Squid]

There are too many humans so we need to find a way to "humanely" depopulate the earth to save "God's Creation"

Of course, the Berkeleyites sincerely believe that their moral pronouncements and pious virtue signalling are the lamb's blood on the lintel that will preserve them and protect their families from the culling. Because they are The Anointed, after all.

If only it were possible to choke to death on one's own smug.

[Governor Squid]

Leftist academia versus hardcore fisking.

On the bright side, every hour that Phil Magness spent putting together his spreadsheet documenting MacLean's dishonesty was an hour he didn't spend updating Wikipedia pages. So at least Mayor Khan't should be happy.

[WTP]

Of course, the Berkeleyites sincerely believe that their moral pronouncements and pious virtue signalling are the lamb's blood on the lintel that will preserve them and protect their families from the culling. Because they are The Anointed, after all.

On the subject of literature...or as I should say "literature"...and of course fantasies about the future, did anyone here besides myself waste several hours of their lives with Gore Vidal's Kalki?

[David]

did anyone here besides myself waste several hours of their lives with Gore Vidal’s Kalki?

No, though I did once struggle through Myra Breckinridge. So far as I could tell, it was not a great literary experience.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Another dose of crazy, not that there has been a shortage.

Food Justice and black veganism.

[WTP]

I did once struggle through Myra Breckinridge. So far as I could tell, it was not a great literary experience.

Heh. Never had the, uh, pleasure. However I did slog through a bit of...can't remember which one, Sexus?, Nexus?, Plexus? ..up to the point that I decided I wanted to drown all the characters in their own urine. Which was kinda the indication it was time to abandon it.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...it was not a great literary experience.

It was made into a movie which had Raquel Welsh strutting around in various states of dishabille, so at least it had that going for it.

[David]

It was made into a movie which had Raquel Welsh strutting around in various states of dishabille,

Because I’m a giver.

[WTP]

Because I’m a giver.

Heh. One of my all-time favs. Every couple years or so I like to repost it on FB. Always a crowd pleaser.

[Daniel Ream]

But the Close Encounters essay is particularly awful and often factually wrong, though typically of its type, in that it repeatedly ignores the obvious intended effect, and the stated motives of the director and composer

The SF author David Brin once wrote a lengthy screed on how superior Star Trek was to Star Wars, based largely on utter fabrications about the latter and outright wishful thinking about the scientific accuracy of the former.

As if which blend of moralizing space fantasy you prefer to rot your brain with is a very important issue.

[Daniel Ream]

I still got a set of Clackers in a box in the attic somewhere

Ooh! I'll get my Pogs!

And my Magic: The Gathering cards.

Wait - the kids are still playing that?

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Ooh! I'll get my Pogs!

Yes, but do you have AAFES Pogs ?

The PX/BX system for OIF/OEF used these gems instead of change to save on the weight of shipping change into theatre. Best part was making the PX/BX take them when you got back. Note that Elvis got both a 5 and a ten cent Pog, but the presidents who had been in the military, just a dime. There may be a hidden meaning there.

[champ]

Getting a little windy to your north, David...

https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/1007331459093450753

[Hal]

Breaking news from the Berkeley (CA) City Council:

Meh.

Local sourcing of information does help.

One just isn't going to be too worried when---italics added---,

Councilmember Cheryl Davila introduced both items and was then appointed chair of the newly formed climate emergency subcommittee. She expressed her frustration with the council for not prioritizing climate action.

“It’s disconcerting that these are the last items on the agenda and people have been waiting all night to speak on this issue,” Davila said during the meeting.

If there was any genuine council interest other than hers, she'd be sharing the "subcommittee" . . . .

[Ed]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/need-close-wikipedias-gender-page-gap/