The Loony Left Coming For Evil Thomas the Tank Engine

[BlasterBates]

Yeah, cheers. But you're right, it would be hard to invent a better topic on which to waste time on the interweb. Huge stakes (maybe), we won't know the truth for decades, if ever, a huge mass of evidence, far more than most laymen could assimilate in their spare time, from which to cherry-pick factoids, columnists willing to make stuff up....

... isn't it about time we had a new one, BP? surely the Daily Mail has said something on the matter recently?

Two things:

Firstly arctic ice, looks like it's going to be a bad year for the warmists




And the Super El Nino is well and truly f****ed
(just to explain, super El Nino drive the global temps up, as it did in the 1980's and 1990's, without them nuffing happens,)




After this wimpish El Nino there will probably be a La Nina which will push global temps down

Ha ha ha ha

[SpontaneousOrder]

'a brilliant, unusual, exceptional boy turned into a purposeless monster. By whom? By what? Is it not by that very society that is now yelling so virtuously in its role of innocent victim? He had a brilliant mind, a romantic, adventurous, impatient soul and a straight, uncompromising, proud character. What had society to offer him? A wretched, insane family as the ideal home, a Y.M.C.A. club as social honor, and a bank-page job as ambition and career...'

If he had any desires and ambitions -- what was the way before him? A long, slow, soul-eating, heart-wrecking toil and struggle; the degrading, ignoble road of silent pain and loud compromises....

"A strong man can eventually trample society under his feet. That boy was not strong enough. But is that his crime? Is it his crime that he was too impatient, fiery and proud to go that slow way? That he was not able to serve, when he felt worthy to rule; to obey, when he wanted to command?

So as you don't own, and haven't read the book you're quoting from, let me fill in some missing context -

If he had any desires and ambitions—what was the way before him? A long, slow, soul-eating, heart-wrecking toil and struggle; a degrading, ignoble road of silent pain and loud compromises. Succeed? How could he succeed? How do men succeed? By begging successfully for the good graces of the society they must serve. And if he could not serve? If he didn’t know how to beg? It’s a long and tortuous road that an exceptional man must travel in this society. It requires a steel-strength that can overcome disgust, which is a worse enemy than fear, and also a steel-hypocrisy, the patient art of hiding oneself when it is wise not to be seen.

and

The petty, narrow, inconsistent, hypocritical ideology of present-day humanity. All the criminal, ludicrous, tragic nonsense of Christianity and its morals, virtues, and consequences.

describe the 'society' a strong man might trample (and if you read the whole section you'd see that 'trample' doesn't mean destroy - it means to overcome. In this instance the boy was too weak and so sought to trample more literally).


And here's what comes immediately after the quote you posted:

This is what I think of the case. I am afraid that I idealize Hickman and that he might not be this at all. In fact, he probably isn’t. But it does not make any difference. If he isn‘t, he could be, and that’s enough. The reaction of society would be the same, if not worse, toward the Hickman I have in mind. This case showed me how society can wreck an exceptional being, and then murder him for being the wreck that it itself has created. This will be the story of the boy in my book.

And, of course, it's worth remembering that these journal entries are a kind of internal dialogue - a process she went through in order to formulate her ideas for novels/plays she intended to write. It wouldn't be particularly honest to take everything at face value. Clearly in this last instance she's taking hints from Hickman's character, and letting her imagination run with it in order to come up with ideas for her play.



So, again, you can see that quoting people who are referring to things you have no knowledge of, let alone understanding, only serves to make you look silly. I don't understand why you persist so.

[SpontaneousOrder]

Might be an improvement, I got to the end of that one, and Orwell could write ....

You'll like animal farm then. It's even shorter.

[pjclarke]

So as you don't own, and haven't read the book you're quoting from, let me fill in some missing context -



and



describe the 'society' a strong man might trample (and if you read the whole section you'd see that 'trample' doesn't mean destroy - it means to overcome. In this instance the boy was too weak and so sought to trample more literally).


And here's what comes immediately after the quote you posted:



And, of course, it's worth remembering that these journal entries are a kind of internal dialogue - a process she went through in order to formulate her ideas for novels/plays she intended to write. It wouldn't be particularly honest to take everything at face value. Clearly in this last instance she's taking hints from Hickman's character, and letting her imagination run with it in order to come up with ideas for her play.



So, again, you can see that quoting people who are referring to things you have no knowledge of, let alone understanding, only serves to make you look silly. I don't understand why you persist so.

Missing context, selective quotation and so on can be misleading, sure. But I note that once again you have to redfine a word this case 'trample' to make your case. You have your interpretation, I have mine.

C'mon. In a sentence if you can manage it, what was the 'blatent lie' you were thinking of? An example of me writing something I knew to be false. All I said was that Rand idealized Hickman to some extent, (evidence: she said so in the quote you quoted - duh! and called him an 'exceptional being'), and admired some of the traits in Hickman's character that made him a psychopath, and gave some of those traits to the protagonists of her fiction, specifically a lack of empathy, compassion, respect for the feelings of others and a steely willingness to do 'whatever it takes' to achieves one's self-centred goals, regardless of the impact on others. She described Hickman's credo '"What is good for me is right" as "The best and strongest expression of a real man's psychology I have heard," and the sketch for the hero of the planned book included 'the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people ... Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should.". A textbook definition of a sociopath's lack of empathy.

from The Journals...

The claim that Hickman's greatest crime is his anti-socialness confirmed my idea of the public's attitude in this case - and explains my involuntary, irresistible sympathy for him, which I cannot help feeling just because of this and in spite of everything else.

[pjclarke]

Blah ...

Ha ha ha ha

Firstly arctic ice, looks like it's going to be a bad year for the warmists

Nobody would be more delighted than I if the decline decelerated, or even reversed. But the ice is 2 standard deviations below the average for the satellite age, and not far above the previous minimum in 2012. The decline has not been monotonic, on a yearly timescale, stochastic factors (weather!) can affect the melt, meaning we tend to get a new record low every few years, not every year. For example 2007 was a massively low new record, but it was not exceeded again until 2012. Some herald this lack of a new low every year as 'a recovery'.

Here's a chart from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center

And the Super El Nino is well and truly f****ed
(just to explain, super El Nino drive the global temps up, as it did in the 1980's and 1990's, without them nuffing happens,)

No. The El Nino Southern Oscillation is simply a redistribution of heat around the oceans, an El Nino event brings warm water to the surface raising the temperatures there, a La Nina event brings cold water to the surface. The clue is in the name, it is an oscillation that has been occurring for thousands of years, with no net effect on the overall trend. Why it should suddenly start warming the world simultaneously with a rise in greenhouse gases is an unexplained mystery. Incidentally, there's a good new paper on the way the models that capture ENSO the best, also model the global temperatures the best, just out ...

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journ...imate2310.html

[BlasterBates]

Were you being ironic BB?

(couldn't resist it)