Town Quixote's

[Grosnick Marowbe]

I've been actioned upon in the past. Don't act like it's never happened.

Ah, what does 'The Wiz of Ooze' know, anyway? He's just here to grade everyone's grammar and spelling errors.

 

[Grosnick Marowbe]

I'll bet Wiz and TH were 'Hall Monitors' when they attended Jr. High School?

 

[Grosnick Marowbe]

My, you are full of yourself, aren't you? I follow GM about...not you. :chuckle:




It matters to me, because that's when you started your crap with me again....follow your own link, and you'll see for yourself. Your playing innocent act is so childish.




My words don't upset me. I just reserve the right to respond to your take on my words. :duh:

It looks as if Townster is showing some signs of 'Paranoia' regarding his fear that posters are 'following him around?'

 

[Grosnick Marowbe]

Townster, you really should take Rusha's advise and realize that Old GM is harmless. Although, you knew that already, right?

Rusha's post #3224 of this thread

 

[glorydaz]

It looks as if Townster is showing some signs of 'Paranoia' regarding his fear that posters are 'following him around?'

When I see one of your posts, I go there. This is all your fault.

Seriously, dude. You are always leading me to some "situation" or another.

But, that's okay. It makes life interesting.

 

[glorydaz]

Townster, you really should take Rusha's advise and realize that Old GM is harmless. Although, you knew that already, right?

Rusha's post #3224 of this thread

He thinks I'm the evil one. :banana:

 

[Grosnick Marowbe]

He thinks I'm the evil one. :banana:

He and his ilk are the problems. I kinda think Rusha and Townster don't really appreciate either one of us?

 

[Grosnick Marowbe]

When I see one of your posts, I go there. This is all your fault.

Seriously, dude. You are always leading me to some "situation" or another.

But, that's okay. It makes life interesting.

It's all part of my agenda. :rotfl:

 

[Grosnick Marowbe]

Townster fancies himself to be a kind of reporter on TOL. So, I suggest he entitle his news outlet: "FAUX News."

 

[Town Heretic]

So my mother had a birthday today and we had lunch together. It's always good to get the family around the table. The older you get the more value little things take on and so much of what ate away at time that once felt inexhaustible falls away and into unimportance as the limits of that time approach.

I was a sports nut for most of my life. Of late I find myself watching the playoffs in baseball, and the finals in the NBA, but almost nothing of the regular season...and not nearly as much of the regular season NFL as I did even a couple of years ago. What surprises me is how it doesn't bother me. How easy it is to let go of it.

There's a lesson in that, I suspect. I'm going to be applying more of it in my present, which is where I've been living of late. And I suspect that's a good thing.

 

[Town Heretic]

As to the practical impact of that consideration on this thread and The Wrap, I think they can coexist. By way of example:

The Wrap
on Thursday

Talked North Korea with Rusha...

:think: *Odd* as in exactly what I have come to expect. IF NK was so easy to fix, it would have happened years ago.

The only hope I had on the point was that NK might use the regime change to shift gears. So far...

And PJ...

Trump makes it look easy.

Makes what, exactly, look easy? I'd be happy to see NK actually begin to change how they do business, but have they really?

Elsewhere, Rex was ruminating...

So, Trump submitted his financial disclosures about paying for Stormy Daniels...and immediately got referred to the Justice Department by the Office of Government Ethics for any possible investigation.

I know, shocking, right?

That this administration still has an Office of Government Ethics?

Who heads it? (someone is going to Clinton drop here) The ghost of LBJ?

Started a thread where people can reflect on their TOL experience, which led to...

9. Has your exposure to the views found here contributed to your having a more/less favorable impression of atheists?

In question #8 you said "religion," and in question #9 you said "atheists," so you're setting an evaluation of a belief system side by side with an evaluation of individuals. If I were to answer to "atheists," I'd say the ones I've encountered on TOL are intelligent and civil. But to maintain continuity with your previous question, I'll say I have a neutral impression of atheism.​

I think religion is much more of a piece than atheism, especially to atheists. That's what accounts for the distinction. I recall when I travelled in those circles for years it was frequently a bit like a turn on Faulkner's southern racist, who hated the race but frequently loved the individual. That struck me as the general tone among people like me at the time who simply found the idea of God a misplaced bit of wishful thinking.

On the other hand, I was curious about how people who came here with a particular religious perspective responded to seeing other perspectives rooted in other faiths and methodological approaches in relation to their larger view. I wondered if the intimacy would widen their lens. So I thought it would be better to speak to both in different frames of reference. Thanks for responding thoughtfully.

And...

3. If you could change one thing about the way things are here what would it be?

Equal enforcement of the rules.

6. What was your primary reason for deciding to stick around here for a while?

Intelligent debate regardless of disagreement and forum friends.

10. Are you more or less emphatic in your beliefs of in any particular belief you came to TOL with as a direct result of your time here?

Yes ... both. I have a deeper understanding and empathy of those dealing with religious,racial and gender issues/bias. I have less tolerance for the persecutors.

While the Marxist thread made me consider that...

A funny thing about people who believe property is theft. They keep trying to take it from other people. :think:

Tomorrow? Night baseball. lain:

 

[patrick jane]

So my mother had a birthday today and we had lunch together. It's always good to get the family around the table. The older you get the more value little things take on and so much of what ate away at time that once felt inexhaustible falls away and into unimportance as the limits of that time approach.

I was a sports nut for most of my life. Of late I find myself watching the playoffs in baseball, and the finals in the NBA, but almost nothing of the regular season...and not nearly as much of the regular season NFL as I did even a couple of years ago. What surprises me is how it doesn't bother me. How easy it is to let go of it.

There's a lesson in that, I suspect. I'm going to be applying more of it in my present, which is where I've been living of late. And I suspect that's a good thing.

Yep, sports and politics take a back seat now for me. Life is too short. My Mom's birthday was May 16. Pretty close.

 

[Town Heretic]

The Wrap
on Saturday


Quip had pop culture covered with...

Yanny or Laurel?

I heard the opening line from Arctic Monkeys' I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor...but then I heard Laurel. lain:

Before Rex surprised me with...

So, Trump submitted his financial disclosures about paying for Stormy Daniels...and immediately got referred to the Justice Department by the Office of Government Ethics for any possible investigation.

I know, shocking, right?

That this administration still has an Office of Government Ethics?

Who heads it? (someone is going to Clinton drop here) The ghost of LBJ?

Noted a less surprising conclusion for must to jump to...

Once again my trap is sprung right on cue. Notice how quickly and voluminously Barbie has his replies formulated.

What might we deduce from this?

Any number of things. One reasonable deduction would be that he's aware of the tactic you've employed because it's routinely used by people on your side of the issue and for that reason he's addressed and considered it prior to the post, is prepared to respond. It's the most likely conclusion and one many of us have experienced ourselves on other issues. I mean, if an anti-theist trots in on the usual show pony I have half a dozen things waiting for him on the point.

Eider kicked in on my TOL question thread...beginning with his take on adding a new rule and why he stayed...

No....... that's like asking me if I would like to add a new rule to the peregrine's hunting technique.

:chuckle:

To learn more......

Now that's about as good a reason as I can think of for most things. :thumb:

I didn't know that Christianity could produce some of the folks I read here.

It doesn't.

While fool suggested...

Limit new threads to one per day per user.

That's a good one.

No microwaving fish in the break room.

It was the one time...ONE TIME. :mmph:

Caught up with the one sentence movie reviews...

Sherlock Gnomes: elementary.

Peter Rabbit: hare raising. lain:

Paddington 2: couldn't bear it.

A Wrinkle in Time: but barely a ripple at the box office.

12 Strong: minutes, all in the credits.

CM took up the gun argument...

While I do favor some additional gun access changes, I do not support restricting access to semi-auto rifles.

Then I'd suggest not much will change and the mounting death toll will eventually alter your position or overwhelm it with the majority of the populace. The numbers are already moving in that direction.

I am also not naive enough to believe that more restrictive laws will solve the problem.

It's not naive. It's empirically true, which is why the numbers line up as I've set out repeatedly. Universal, tough gun laws have real, measurable impact on public safety and gun violence.

It is a problem with hearts, not tools.

It's both and always has been, but the latter is more accessible and cheap and the former hasn't grown up enough to make that latter a non-issue.

Ending with...

Laws are only as effective as peoples willingness to follow them.

If you can't buy an assault weapon it doesn't matter that you don't like the law and don't want to follow it.

California has some of the strictest gun laws in the country yet they have had a terrorist shooting.

And some people who are on the pill will become pregnant.

New York, Chicago and D.C. all have very restrictive gun laws and equally high gun violence rates.

New York has the third lowest rate of gun deaths among the 50 states. Illinois is 8th in terms of gun laws, according to the Giffords Center, and 16th lowest in terms of gun violence and death per 100k of its citizens, despite having the outlier of Chicago, awash in violence and poverty for some time now, which impacts the figures.

In any case, our Canadian and European don 't see the same level of gun violence. Canada's laws are not as restrictive as Europe's but the violence rates are less. But they have other problems.

Looking at the data compilation from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (link) at 2016 and deaths per 100k:

US, 3.85 Canada, .28 Australia, .20 Denmark .14
United Kingdom, .07 Germany .12 France, .34
Italy, .38 Ireland, .17 Spain, .14 Sweden, .19

Inside the U.S.? Alabama, with some of the weakest gun laws in the nation, averaged 6.76 deaths by firearm per 100k...New York, by comparison, had 2.89 deaths per 100k. And all of them are woefully over the European averages. Our safest state? Hawaii, coming in at 1.58 per 100k. It also has some of the stronger gun laws in the nation.

...Everytime I ask people for a list of laws that would have prevented a shooting I get a list of laws that ALREADY exist in most cases.

Then you're asking the wrong people.

While Must was getting all Musty in the reminder thread...

It's so easy for you people to blindly fear hate whatever you're told to, that it's scary.

Spoiler

I almost feel sorry for you.

Other things he almost feels: questionable looking melons at the supermarket and that tingle that would have told him his shampoo is working.

I can hear the crying in your posts. Try to heal.

So he can't quite feel, and he's hearing things. lain:

Tomorrow? Angry Marxists and who knows what else? :think:

 

[Town Heretic]

The Wrap
on Deja Vu


The Marxist thread was heating up when...

A funny thing about people who believe property is theft. They keep trying to take it from other people. :think:

Waxed nostalgic with red...I mean AB...

Despite there being an obvious bias in play, there was still plenty of room for passionate debate that other forums would shut down at the merest hint of disagreement. It had a good mix of people and many that are sorely missed nowadays.

Though in fairness there are still a number of sore people in the mix...so that's something.

A bit or repartee with anna left me to conclude that...

lain:

We're a regular Laurel and Hardy, aren't we...I mean if they were dramatists.

Esset tried to revive her Golden Age of ad hom, but...

Your favorite actor is?

:think: You, of course.

While over in the gun control thread...

Town, please. Let me educate you. No one dies before their time

So far, so little. Next time you get a nasty cut don't forget to ignore it.

gun, knife illegal hexican, negro with a sledge hammer..death is universal bud. Get used to it.

And wrapping it up with a non sequitur was a bold choice too.

Continued with gen on the topic of reasonable restraint...

...For the ordinary citizens that would be eligible for the Militia, most of the ones living today believe in rights and reject duties...Nobody that rejects the duties that come from being a citizen of the United States should have the rights that come with that citizenship.

You have a duty to obey the law. You have the right to live as you please within it.

...Any number of founding thoughts have required our attention and alteration over the course of time, from slavery to the place of women within the legal framework. The original reasoning and the changing nature of the carnage modern weapons bring with them should have any reasonable person reconsidering the line of what is and isn't within the nation's interest when it comes to gun laws.

Heard an advertisement today for a candidate for office. One of the things said by the spokesman caught my particular attention. He said, "X is pro-life and pro-NRA!"

I no longer believe those two statements are compatible.

Talked systematic concerns with JR...

...If we were to judge the quality of all justice systems by the amount of crime that exists in the nation the system belongs to, we have possibly the absolute worst system possible.

If we judged the greatness of painting by how much paint was used we'd have very different museums too.

Making it harder to sin just means that the criminals will try harder to sin.

By that reason we should erase the law altogether and men, free of its inducement, will live more saintly lives. Come now.

The answer IS NOT "how do we make it so that people can't commit crime," it's "how do we make it so that people WON'T commit crime."

Rather, the law restrains those who can be restrained by conscience and convention, makes commission more unlikely for those who fail in that but have sufficient self-interest to promote lawful dealings given the nature of consequence, and can through imposition, as with laws forbidding certain guns, make particular criminal acts greatly less likely. And that's demonstrable, not hypothetical.

Why have so many laws? How is anyone supposed to follow so many laws without having plenty of lawyers with you at all times?

Easily, which is why the overwhelming majority of Americans, many with not much formal education and none in the law, manage it every day of the week.

Let's set up a hypothetical world in which I'm a normal citizen who turns criminal and I want to take over a plane with a gun..Which of your many laws prevented me getting on the plane with the gun and ammunition and making demands with it?

The one that prohibits you from legally possessing the gun you used, that bars its entry into commerce and ready availability.

It doesn't matter how many laws you make, people will go around them to commit crimes.

Some doubtless will. But again, this isn't about perfection, it's about making certain acts/crimes less likely to happen, reducing the death toll. We can do that. We can do a lot better than we're doing.

If judges were the ones doing the questioning and judging, court cases would take MINUTES, not years.

And a great deal of injustice, human error, and bias would pass for justice. The more you concentrate power the more you invite its abuse. True of kings and true of judges. It's a bad idea, which is one reason we have juries and appellate courts and why almost no one is trying to get a monarchy in play anywhere in the world where republics have come into being..

Tomorrow? Nun control, silencers for the lambs, and the follies of youth... oly:

 

[Town Heretic]

The Wrap
on Hump Day


Said anna, with a sideways glance...

In other words, I've learned to use the ignore function the way it's set up to be used. :chuckle:

I like to think that I've improved the system. lain:

I also sometimes like to think Wednesday is a color.

And you won't believe the Tom foolery and fallderall that unleashed. Check it out. Follow the yellow brick link. You'll see.


In the gun thread, after I noted the moral complicity of the NRA in an ongoing tragedy...

Is this just hyperbole for someone you see as a troll? or do you really believe this?

Both his trolling and the moral failure of the gun lobby are as real as Christmas. I don't have to believe in them, only observe them.

JR got creative...

...what law prevents (as in, makes it completely impossible) for a criminal to go around such laws?

So you only pass laws you believe criminals can get behind?

Here's a better question that answers the concern behind yours: why do you think that in countries where criminals are no more inclined to follow the law we have dramatically reduced gun violence and incidents of mass-shooting when tough, universal gun laws are put into play?

And eventually started looking for any port in a shinola storm of horses and carts, beginning with my use of clip instead of magazine...no he really did that...

So you intentionally used the wrong word? I call that being dishonest.

But then, you call what you're doing argument, so who knows what you mean by that? :think:

That's twice now that you've not paid attention to what I said. I specifically said "damage their hearing while defending themselves. That generally means that they're not out hunting...

I chose to address the better argument, the one you should have but didn't make...At home I can understand the idea, because shooting indoors is going to be deafening with any sort of real firepower. But in that case I'd say you should keep muffling headgear handy. Let the bad guy go deaf or to his knees when you fire that shotgun, assuming your aim is on par with your argument. It couldn't hurt.

And even so, so what? I think it would be a tactical advantage to use a silencer when hunting, so that you don't scare off all the animals when you fire a shot.

So, to borrow from you, you don't know much about hunting...or don't realize how loud a silenced weapon still is. You're not gaining a hunting advantage with the animals. It's strictly about your ears and their proximity to the part of the gun that makes the racket, and that protection can be accomplished by other means that don't make police officers irked and impair their ability to do their jobs.

As to why our cousins do so much better where criminals still don't love obeying the law:

Because they have far more severe punishments than we do here in America.

No they don't. They're more lenient on the whole. Google it if you don't believe me. It's part of why they have a lot less of their population in prison. Their approach to drugs alone, on average, saves them a lot of space and money.

On scrapping our current system of law...

You still might be wondering how does this address "gun control."

No, because draconian fantasies don't address gun control. There will be no return of the kings. Concentrating power in fewer hands remains an invitation to injustice and eliminating appeals and prisons invites miscarriages of that cannot then be recompensed.

Back to the OP then:

The point remains that we can, using any number of models (that differ in both approach and impact) tested for decades by every other Western industrial democracy, significantly impact gun violence and mass shooting. The rationally indisputable truth is that even when we weak sister the attempt on a state level we do better than states without that level of control, which is why New York can lose around four citizens to gun violence while Alabama loses double digits (per 100k). None of that is coincidental. I've linked to the hard data and pools of it for a number of you, from state to international data that confirms everything I've told you.

The rest is what we do or fail to do within the strictures of the law.

gen offered another perspective...

Creating "gun free zones" without supplying armed guards is what turns schoolyards and concerts into killing grounds.

No, allowing easy access to weapons that can kill dozens in moments is what does that. All you need is the eventual evil or diseased idiot with enough cash in his pocket and the carnage is on its way. I'm not an advocate of gun free zones. They're too small to matter and don't address the actual problem of access outside of those zones. Rather, use the models we have on hand and make a deliberate choice to dramatically reduce gun violence in our lifetimes.

And I'll wrap the latest in a flurry of AB attempts to address the Laura controversy...

Younger people are more prone to hearing higher frequencies that can also alter the sound.

They're also prone to bad haircut choices. Exhibit A: everyone's senior yearbook.

"Magic eye" pictures took me a while to get and relaxing was the key to see the actual picture instead of concentrating so much on it.

I had the same problem with the Magic 8 ball. lain:

Sound is different. If a piece is in A major, say,

Like that could happen. :rotfl: :think: A major what?

then no amount of anything is going to alter it's key unless manipulated...

You know what else is easy to manipulate? The Trump fan base. Not sure about the key though.

I know it isn't sharp. :roses:

Tomorrow? Parrots that are strangely deceased, inadvertent illustrations, and who's afraid of the big bad Canadians?

 

[Town Heretic]

The Wrap
on Friday


Beginning with the rebuttal of an old nag...

An atheist friend of mine recently said, "The problem with you Christians is that you don't realize God is just a crutch."

I answered, "The problem with atheists is that they don't realize they're crippled.

And continuing with a horse of another color when intojoy wrote, in a now gilded cage (sorry, no links because it's closed)...

Originally Posted by intojoy
I kicked a bum out of Starbucks today.

You're a bouncer at a Starbucks? That can't be a tough gig.

He was sitting outside, peed straight thru his pants. I proceeded to get a hose hit him over the head and spray him down. He left without incident. A white bum in Hawaii. What’s this country coming too?

Illegal vigilante tactics? :think: Or Mittyesque prose fests. It's a toss-up.

Filed under...

We spend all day on Twitter.

Twitter, where attention spans go to die.

On the sudden disappearance of a good many posts...

What happened to the rest of the thread? :liberals:

I think a dingo ate it. lain:

Perhaps it was removed?

Dingbat is a completely different word, but thanks for the contribution.

Maybe the tweets overburdened it?

That would be, "Bingo!" :think: But I like it.

What if all of this is an attempt by Knight to introduce TOL to the Mandela effect?

Tried to shake up the music thread...

Another song that would fit on a "Bond" film...

I actually did a take on the classic Bond theme, adding lyrics to it.

Bond-ba-ba-Bond-Bond-Bond-ba-ba
Bond-ba-ba-Bond-Bond-Bond-ba-ba
Bond-ba-ba-Bond-Bond-Bond-ba-ba
Jimmy! Ba-ba-Bond...

lain: I'm still waiting to hear back from the studio.

And I would have too, if it weren't for a couple of meddling kids...

When did you call? 1967?

:think: What year did they stop making rotary phones?

They might have out taken it to the "cleaners"...

Shaken, not pressed. lain:

Then into asked...

If I’m racist, how is it that I can easily share aloha with black people?

I'd think the goodbye use of that would be easy, but Faulkner answered your larger problem a long time ago. Assuming you do and can do that, I'd have to say you resemble his Southern racist, by showing so much obvious contempt for the race, while finding affection and regard for the individual.

It's not a new problem.

And...

Well coming from my past I don’t think many here on TOL could’ve achieved financially what I have had they gone thru the same trials...I literally went from skid row to become a self made millionaire.

There you go. :thumb: Feeling better? Now how does a guy with that sort of wealth have a home where two dudes can just walk up to the front door to talk about some goddess?

Maybe that’s why I have a sense of humor that Anna doesn’t have.

Anna has a great sense of humor. Maybe your judgment is as suspect as your narrative.

The story of the 2 goddess of heaven cult that came to my door for example. What’s wrong with threatening them?

Besides it being pointless, rude, and illegal? Shoot. Not a thing. lain:

I forgot about that moment but I’m happy to remember it thx to Anna’s lack of humor/common sense. I’ll bring that up at the next get together with the guys.

I'm sure you will. Maybe sprinkle a few zombies in the next one, just for flavor.

While in one of the gun threads...

And that's correct---the murder rate in the United States dropped more on a percentage basis, after the Australian assault weapon ban + confiscation, than it did IN AUSTRALIA. So what does THAT tell you?

That if you skew a consideration hard enough you can almost make data say anything you want...between 1997 and present date, since the imposition of laws taking the weapons most successful in mass shootings out of easy access and commercial circulation, there have been 0 mass shootings in Australia.

Here are the death tolls in the U.S. from mass shootings since 2013 on the left, with a / plus the number of dead and then the same numbers in Australia each of those years. You can figure out the comparative rates if you like:

2013: 339/ 467 dead. Australia: 0/0 dead.
2014: 325/ 364 dead. Australia: 0/0 dead.
2015: 371/ 469 dead. Australia: 0/0 dead.
2016: 477/ 606 dead. Australia: 0/0 dead.
2017: 427/ 590 dead. Australia: 0/0 dead.

And over in the "divide Cali" thread...

I'm leaning more toward consolidation of the states we have. lain: I think that at minimum we have at least 5 states too many. Possibly as many as 10. I mean, just look at New England, won't you? Which, as it turns out, is the area's new tourism slogan.

Started my part of an open conversation on religious liberty in relation to discrimination...

So new guy on the block and I haven't had time to follow all this thread yet but I call myself a civil libertarian so civil rights is an important thing to me including religious liberty.

Do you believe that a baker's religious liberty is threatened when he is forced to provide to the public that which he holds out to the public for sale? Because it has always struck me that any law permitting me to deny a customer service for a non-business reason is a de facto segregation law waiting for popular enforcement.

Tomorrow? :think: Styx and stones, when TED talks, and it's bedtime for Hitler...

 

[annabenedetti]

:think: What year did they stop making rotary phones?

Do you still say "dial the number?" I do. :chuckle:

 

[Idolater]

I wish you as many assault weapons and ultra-high-capacity clips as you can safely secure when you're not carrying them, for you and your family and loved ones and neighbors, Town. Blessings.

 

[Town Heretic]

Do you still say "dial the number?" I do. :chuckle:

But it's only time to worry when you find yourself listening to make sure one one else is on the line. :shocked:

I wish you as many assault weapons and ultra-high-capacity clips as you can safely secure when you're not carrying them, for you and your family and loved ones and neighbors, Town. Blessings.

We have more guns per than anyone and we're the least safe democracy on the planet. So I'll wish you a world free of their taint and impact and refer you back to the thread in question if you want to continue the conversation on that with me. I always appreciate discourse on points that matter.

:cheers:

 

[annabenedetti]

But it's only time to worry when you find yourself listening to make sure one one else is on the line. :shocked:

Happy to say that was before my time.