Weekend Open Thread
Some important news items nobody mentioned yesterday:
Snow is leaving the White House for financial reasons.
Hastert will not run for re-election possibly opening up his seat to a democratic challenger.
The White House is beginning to create a phased withdrawal plan to remove some of the U.S. troops out of Iraq.
The Bush administration seems to view containment as the best strategy to deal with Iran.
Have a good weekend.
Submitted by Specter on Sat, 2007-08-18 09:07
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Comments :
good morning
Check this idiot out - Liberals, the Jews of the 21st Century.
:
uhhuh
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Heh... now, now -
let's not pretend that story was greeted with anything but derision. Credit where credit is due, no?
Incidentally, the author now thinks dkos is nothing but immature kindergardners. Does that mean you all can have him now, since you agree on at least one point? :)
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
Exactly
I dumped all 5 on him, and I rarely use my troll-rates. His other diaries are trollish also. He will be drummed off the site in short order.
skymutt: wise and powerful... enlightened...
I know I know :)
My internet connection was down most of the day... Finally got it. It was pretty rough :)
But yeah, the author was an idiot.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
OK, I read the whole article.
AND all of the comments. I find the results to be curious. Why was this poster singled out as a troll? His point is completely in line to mainstream liberal rhetoric, namely Bush = Hitler. The only nuance I detected was the conflating of that meme with the Christian Right.
To check this I skimmed through the diaries tagged with "nazi"
and looked at any that had more than just a handful of comments. Here is what I found:
I'm not so sure that the meme of Bush = Hitler is soundly refuted here in the liberal
motherlandmothercite.Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree
En garde!
Hee, you have a low threshold for "handful", since Lessons from Germany
had four comments!
The only two in there that get positive support for equating Bush with Nazis are Does Bush bother you?
(a whopping 11 comments!) and Holocaust Survivor 
, which I'll grant you. But it's got a trump card: it supposedly comes from the mouth of a Holocaust survivor, and you know that we treat them differently than pundits. But I will give you that one.
Try looking at this dispassionately for a moment. Most of those diaries got a dozen (at most) comments, and you're searching through a year's worth. I think it's safe to say that that doesn't qualify as mainstream rhetoric, wouldn't you? Unless you have a very different definition of mainstream than I do?
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
RE: En garde!
I am counting poll responses as comments and that post had 39 poll responses. My threshold was 10, so technically that is "two handfuls" (of fingers at least).
You are ignoring the poll results which, by definition, should be more telling than even a review of the comments, IMHO.
I think this latter one, while the title sounds off topic, is actually a pretty telling example because it is clearly drawing a parallel between pre-WWII Germany and the US today AND the poll results are overwhelmingly in support of the meme expressed in the diary.
Even so, I didn't even overstate the result at all:
"I'm not so sure ..." is hardly a hyperbole caliber comment is it? I guess I actually mispoke by restricting my comment to just "Bush = Hitler" since I was obviously looking at any diaries that were simply related to "US = Nazi Germany" which is a bit broader.
Fair enough. But I also don't find a lot of diaries on how small children shouldn't be sodomized. Should I take that to mean, as you comment suggests, that this is NOT a mainstream belief among liberals on the mothersite?
The fact that this isn't a popular topic to write diaries about doesn't really say much about how widespread the views are, does it? Because if it does then I can only assume that the kossacks don't care about the sodomization of small children, correct?
Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree
Out of curiosity ...
I did a similar effort on the tag for sodomy
.
I found one diary that addressed the topic of sodomy of children:
The results of this diary (3 comments and 23 poll responses) were comparable to the Lessons from Germany
you complained about above (in such a way as to imply that this did not reflect the mainstream views of the site) and it had four comments and 39 poll responses.
So if I accept your logic above as being accurate, should I now walk away with the impression that the concept that sodomizing children is a bad thing is NOT a mainstream kossack position?
Now, to their credit, the respondents to this single diary were correctly outraged by the concept of sodomizing children. But alas, as you note above, this is hardly the mainstream view among kossacks, right? :)
Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree
Blogs aren't about views, they are about discussion
Your data suggests that the diarists and commenters at DailyKos see no need for further discussion concerning the acceptability of sodomizing children.
I'd guess it is because its unacceptability is taken as a given. Fortunately, if you have any doubts, feel free to re-register, write a diary and take a poll. Your new persona will probably be troll-rated into oblivion if you aren't subtle in your anthropological endeavour, but the experiment is there, waiting for your attention so you can prove the accepted theory wrong.
RE: Blogs aren't about views, they are about discussion
Does the data above, then, similarly suggest that these diarists and commenters at DailyKos see no need for further discussion concerning the validity of the "US = Nazi Germany" meme?
With all due respect, I suspect I have more experience with anticipating how trolls are treated at dkos. I see no need to bother with this, what would it prove? What is the accepted theory you are referring to?
Bonus Question:
Why do you think I posted the bit about the sodomizing of children? What do you think the point I was making actually was by posting that?
Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree
Go read his Hillary diary from the night before
I would not automatically trollrate anyone who made a Bush = Nazi reference, though nearly all are ridiculous and many are trollish. In this particular case, the diarist had also posted an equally trollish diary the night before, which I (and likely others) had read; that was the deciding factor for me in donating my daily trollrate allottment to him. This guy was obviously looking to cause trouble and had nothing of value to add to the site. It's all a judgement call. If a longtime user makes a Bush = Hitler comment, I may not trollrate even if I think it's ridiculous. I save the trollrates for users I think ought to be banned.
I'm sure that you must be encouraged that the DailyKos readership is now becoming more active in banning this kind of troll, right?
skymutt: wise and powerful... enlightened...
RE: Go read his Hillary diary from the night before
Well, let's see. What does this actually imply. You are obviously a TU (e.g. part of the mainstream by any accounting), and you would NOT automatically consider someone who expressed "Bush = Nazi" as deserving banning. Hmmm. Seems like you don't find that concept to be inherently outlandish then?
So, even dear skymutt serves as an example of how the mainstream at dkos don't immediately dismiss (e.g. via troll rating) the diarists that make the claim "Bush - Hitler". So, again, I'm not so sure that the meme of Bush = Hitler is soundly refuted here in the liberal
motherlandmothersite.More active in banning trolls? They can't get more active in banning trolls. What type of troll, exactly, do you consider this type of poster to be, BTW?
Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree
Seems like you don't find
Yes and no-- my personal philosophy about Hitler holds him as one of the most despicable men ever to take breath on this earth, but I do not assign him any special status, and the mere mention of his name holds no mystical power over me. So, in theory, a comparison could be made between a living person and Hitler that I do not consider to be inherently outlandish. In practice, obviously, the comparisons are nearly always outlandish to me.
You're the one who's equating dismissing a comment and trollrating it, not me. I dismiss many ridiculous comments without trollrating them. Just my my personal choice, so that when something absolutley transparently trollish comes up, I've got dry powder. I also have personal rules to never trollrate someone that I'm in an argument with, and also I have never trollrated someone in my own diary. And I don't trollrate Ender ;-)
There are degrees of "Bush = Hitler"-- it's more trollish to say that "Bush is a genocidal madman as evil as Adolf Hitler" and to say that "Bush and his minions used Gestapo tactics to intimidate X"-- the first example compares the totality of Bush to Hitler and the second only compares an aspect of Bush to Hitler... So you'd have to define what you mean by "Bush = Hitler"... if you broaden your definition of "Bush = Hitler" out to the second type of comparison, then yes, I see those kinds of comments getting support sometimes.
If you think that "Bush=Hitler" is not refuted soundly enough, might I suggest that your 53rd DailyKos identity awaits you?
Garden variety purity troll. He's got yet another troll diary up as we speak.
skymutt: wise and powerful... enlightened...
RE: Seems like you don't find
I no longer feel the need. I still have some active accounts but I really don't want to post there anymore. That place is just pure evil IMHO.
Well, it seems that someone is covering the trolling then so I can focus on other things! :)
Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree
pure evil
You know what they say-- "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing..."
The pure evil thing is a bunch of hogwash anyway...
skymutt: wise and powerful... enlightened...
I said it was my opinion ...
I think I have enough banned accounts to refute the "do nothing" charge. :)
Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree
"to do nothing"
That's present tense, meaining "to have no current activity". Mike Tyson used to be heavyweight champion, now he's doing nothing.
Attempted refute of charge-- FAILED :-)
Maybe countering all that supposed unchallenged evil on DailyKos isn't all that important after all...
skymutt: wise and powerful... enlightened...
Sensible news. The FDA decides not to close multiple
Food Safety Laboratories.
(via CNN) Previously some individuals & groups had pushed for closing half the Labs around the country to save money (where have we heard that line before).
I'm really glad they made this call. With the food contaminations they found earlier this year, the whole concept of closing labs didn't make any sense to me. Then again, there's always that contingent that wants to lop anything it can off the government in the name of saving money, reducing governmental oversight & associated costs, and freedom in general.
I can understand those first two, even if I don't agree with them, but the third one I've never understood.
this is funny
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/in_the_know_candidates_compete?utm...
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Wow, that was really well done!
I didn't realize the Onion was doing broadcasts like this (I only ever read their AV Club now). That was fantastic.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
Gore tried
to push the IDGIT vote in the last couple of days of the '00 campaign with the DUI charge but obviously he started too early!
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Tried but failed.
Gore really didn't have a chance. Bush had the IDGIT vote locked up (IDGITs vote for their own!) They still make up the bulk of his support.
;-)
More comics..
Today's Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller
is both funny and true.
and
Doonesbury
. Remember when Doonesbury made a statement in that ironic way? Soft & poignant at the same time. Enjoy.
The NY Times ran an article today written by
members of the 82nd Airborne who are just returning from a 15 month tour in Iraq.
It's titled: "The War as We Saw It".
So, who is going to be the first to refute what these troops say?
scientists create life
Scientists expect to create life in next 10 years
Why do the idiots at MSNBC have to write like their audience are complete morons?
That's just absurd...
Anyways, interesting subject nonetheless - what does it mean to you?
Also What exactly is life?
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Ugh. I know that article is for laypeople,
but they could have been a little more specific. What "prime test of artificial intelligence" are they talking about? A Turing test? A Searle (Chinese box) test?
Some level of detail would be nice...!!!!
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
Looks like the Turing test
Oh, and Searle should have stuck to philosophy. His though experiment shows either an amazing lack of understanding of AI or just a lot of human chauvinism.
Even the Turing test is problematic,
since it focuses more on whether we can be fooled into thinking something else is human. Although there's the rub: there really is no way to gauge consciousness in a separate being, so it's always a matter of how much we can be "convinced" into thinking so.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
yes, if by problematic you mean garbage
Turing wa a smart guy but the turing test is one of his flops. It proves nothing and it has been beaten by cleverly scripted software. The claim that it hasn;t been bested is based on moving the goalposts to add additional criteria after the fact.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.