Hugos, Sad Puppies, and the the Game of Thrones ... ... by Bob Nelson
I don't remember the title of the first SF book I read -- it was of the genreI later came to recognize as "standard coming-of-age young-adult Space Cadet schlock"... but well-crafted schlock by an excellent wordsmith. I don't remember who the author was, other than it was one of the Big Names: Gordon Dickson, or someone like that. In any case, I was hooked!
I chewed through hundreds and hundreds of books from Asimov to Zelazny, and I have continued ever since, to today's Abercrombie and Willis. In the '60s, like all SF readers, I saw the rise of New Wave authors, but not being a literary kind of guy, I did not know the term. I did know that Harlan Ellison's stuff was not to my taste, so I voted with my wallet, sticking to Space Opera, from R Daneel Olivaw to Miles Vorkosigan.
The authors who got me started fifty years ago are all gone now, of course... so I have had to pick up new ones along the way. For most of those five decades, I bought paperbacks. Like most readers, I suppose, I was swayed by cover art and blurbs -- there was not much else to go by. I soon realized that "Hugo Award Winner" was a pretty good indication. The "Hugo Award Winner" blurb on Connie Willis's 1993 Doomsday Book is a good example -- I have since read every word she has written. Her 2011 Blackout/All Clear tandem is just about as good as it gets: nerve-tingling plot, great characters, brain-spraining metaphysics...
Over time, I saw that some Hugos went to authors I did not care for -- the descendents of Harlan Ellison, in my mind. But hey! I know that my taste is not the universe's guiding light! It did not bother me that works that did not meet my personal criteria might please others. I figure that if there a zillion different cars on the market, there's a reason!
Which brings us to Sad Puppies.
Well, no. Not yet. Let me go back to about 1991 or '92. Internet!! E-books! One day a search for "free ebooks" (which may have still been via Alta Vista at the time) brought me to the Baen Free Library. Baen Books was founded byJim Baen in 1983 and dedicated to "real science fiction" like John W Campbell used to publish!The Baen Free Library was a digital stack of epubs available for free download. If you liked a book, you might buy some more! I ended up buying several hundred! Baen's specialty was asub-genre called "military SF", with clashes of fleets and great daring-do. Great fun, unless it is taken seriously. One of the star authors, John Ringo (I HOPE it is a pseudo!) straight-facedly had a bunch of redneck yahoos saving the planet Earth from space invasion, firing a fifty-calibre machine-gun from the back of their pickup truck. Not kidding! Ringo is of course an Ayn Rand devotee, spilling her wisdom across his oeuvres .
The Baen Books website includes a forum called Baen's Bar. I was banned for not agreeing with Mr Ringo's vision of the universe. That really pissed me off, because I had in fact bought several of his early books, before he went completely wingnut... In fact, I bought books by just about every one of Baen's considerable stable. Eric Flint is still a favorite of mine.
Which brings us to Sad Puppies... this time for real.
A couple years ago, a Baen writer named Larry Correia, on the belief that the Hugo Awards had been kidnapped by radical left-wingers whomhe calls "Social Justice Warriors", decided to recruit enough John Ringo True Believers to effectively take control of the Hugo Award ballot process. This year, his successor at the head of the Sad Puppies movement, Brad Torgerson, was brilliantly successful. The Ringo Faithful successfully packed the nominating process,ensuring their victory in the final voting. Baen authors won everything.
I am a Vietnam vet. That war was epitomized by a young lieutenant's phrase, "We had to destroy the village to save it." The Sad Puppies had to destroy the Hugo to save it. It is not clear whether the Hugo Awards will ever carry the kind of aura that they had before the Sad Puppy coup d'tat . (I'll spare you the disgustingly racist Rabid Puppies offshoot, but if you insist, here's Torgerson's attempt to distance himself .)
George R R Martin, the author of the Game of Thrones series of books, and of course a multiple Hugo-winner himself, went through the the winners list , year by year, to demonstrate that the Sad Puppies complaint -- "the Social Justice Warriors control the voting and take all the awards" -- is not true. Demonstrably not true.
The whole Sad Puppy movement is a pitiful paranoid temper tantrum.
(Incidentally, Brad Torgerson's The Chaplain's War deserved to win a Hugo without any red-letter-of-shame asterisk, as all the current awards will forevercarry. It is a thoughtful book about faith and trust, and a personal relation with... God... maybe. There are a few battle scenes, but they are incidental.)
The Sad Puppy movement is, to my mind, a perfect miniature of the Tea Party movement. Delusional paranoia leading to a blind militantism thatdestroys the very institutions supposedly being defended.
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The Sad Puppies have won.
The question is, "Justwhat, exactly, have they won?"
Harlan Ellison was an angry SOB . He seemed to be fighting some kind of battle in which only he knew who the villians were .
So who are the "villians" ? Has he ever revealed their identity ?
Well, Bob, while you claim to have been banned for arguing with John Ringo, your account (presuming you're the same bob.nelson@randomconsulting company.com) is not locked, although I have records of two different occasions when you received moderator warnings for trolling, NEITHER of which involved John Ringo, one in January 2007 and another in January 2008. The first was from my now-ex-wife, I wasn't a moderator at the time and just told you you were behaving in a way likely to be warned for trolling, my ex gave the official warning, then I warned you in 2008 when I was an official moderator.
So, while a number of people over the years have tried to claim the "banner" of having been banned from Baen's Bar, you, like them, actually haven't been.
My goodness! So much venom. May I ask why? Your reaction seems intense and visceral, as though you felt aggressed personally, rather than cooly intellectual as one might expect of a debate about a literary prize.
But I think your venom is pretty much beside the point. Does the rank of the speaker matter, or is the content of "I had to destroy it to save it" what counts. If you really had the details of the quote in memory (as opposed to doing a quick -- unmentioned -- Google search) then clearly you feel it to be even more significant than I.
I'm the only SF fan you've ever met who doesn't remember the details of their first reading, a half-century earlier? Really? The only one? That's amazing.
I didn't say I argued with John Ringo. I said I was thrown out for disagreeing with him. That was a shortcut for "I didn't join the Ayn Rand, guns, and machismo circle-jerk". The point of recalling the incident was to suggest that intellectual openness was not the primary characteristic of the Bar. But things may have changed -- it was a long time ago.
Nor did I say that Mr Ringo had anything to do with the Sad Puppies. I cited him as exemplary of Baen. Do you disagree?
Finally... the formulation "It appears that you believe..." is pretentious and fallacious. If you want to say "I understand you to mean...", that's fine. Tell us what you think. Tell us how you interpret events.But please do not try to tell us what I believe. I will do that. Thank you very much.
I for one would like to see a development of your analogy between the Sad Puppies and the civil rights movement. Is Larry Correia the new Martin Luther King? Who has died in the cause? The Shwerner-Chaney-Goodmans? The victims of lynching? Or is the analogy perhaps a bit over the top?
Is it coincidence that kidnapping the civil rights tradition is a standard Tea Party tactic?
Yes... but ereader devices were still kinda primitive. In fact, I listened to most of them. I ran them through a text-to-speech program. My work had me on the road a great deal so I was an early adopter of mp3 players!
I guess your records reflect your reading skills. I did not say I argued with John Ringo. And I was locked out. Perhaps you do not use the word "ban".
If I remember correctly -- it was a long time ago -- my "crime" was something called "third-order trolling" or somesuch. This consisted of expressing ideas contrary to the prevailing Ayn-Rand-guns-machismo "philosophy". And I do vaguely remember "Cochrane". Julie's husband, back then, if memory serves.
Have you been a member here on NT for long? I don't recall interacting...
After asking the question, I remembered that I could answer it myself, by checking your profile. You just joined. A few hours ago.
Welcome!
Did you join with the particular purpose of disputing my statement that I was banned from Baen's Bar? That would be really cool! It would imply so many fascinating things!
Did Jon Ogden just join, too? His profile is "private", so I can't tell...
This is very cool. Do you folks (Sad Puppies, Barfliies, Ringo crusaders, or whoever you are) have a Google-alert set up to catch otherwise unnoticed articles like mine?
I'm very glad you stopped in. Otherwise, this article -- which took some time to write -- would not have had a single reply.
They just joined. Interesting.
Indeed.
I'm in the process of registering at Baen's Bar. (It's hermetic except to registered members.)
I haven't been back there for at least ten years, and don't remember if registration was required. They have apparently changed systems recently. I'll look around a bit...
Exactly.
They got themselves the AWARD! But in the process they debased the thing to near-worthless.
Ah, well... I use mainly Amazon/Audible user reviews to find new authors nowadays...
Did you like Frank Herbert? I struggled through Dune, but never understood why it got such a loyal following... much less a zillion follow-up books...
I caught the bug in the 3rd grade when I picked out 3 books at random from the school library for a 6 week reading project. Up to that point I never read just for the thrill of reading.
The three books, that started my reading addiction were;
Bulfinch's Mythology, Robert Heinlein's Red Planet & The Saga of Grettir the Strong, (An Icelandic saga from the fourteenth century).
Afterthe enjoyment I got from reading thosebooks I just couldn't get enough "sci-fi", orfantasyto satisfy my needs. As you say Feronia, always looking for the gem, chasing the thrill I got from those first books:-)
Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That was my opinion, and I have never figured out why he was so successful.
Hebert presaged the whole epic trilogy genre. Yes he was boring, but it is his style not his content.
A more visceral manner of storytelling. A lot of people called Asimov boring also. but Asimov got people to Think, I mean they all can't be Heinlein now can they...
Don't bet on it. Both these guys registered today, obviously consecutive to a Google Alert for "Sad Puppies". They posted before realizing that my article had already fallen off the FP, without a single Reply. When I thanked them for making the first Replies.... They vanished.
We won't see them again.
Who is your favorite today? Mine are Connie Willis and Lois McMaster Bujold.
He was a Doctor of Biochemistry, A tenured professor of biochemisty at UMass I believe, was invited to work for DARPA, and refused, but did consult for them a few times. He was a close friend of Gene Roddenberry and consulted with him on the first Star Trek movie. He brought into existence the Social Science Fiction style discussing the human condition in ways no one had ever imagined. My first experience with him was I, Robot. where he coined the term positronic. "Bicentennial Man" was another of his robot stories I liked very much and was the basis of the 1999 movie with Robin Williams.
There were only two people he considered smarter than him, Carl Sagan and Marvin Minsky. (an expert on AI and computers)
He, Heinlein and Clarke are considered the "Big Three" of modern science fiction. Hard to argue with that. And must reads, all three of them.
First: Goddam, what a ridiculous number of hoops to jump through to register. You would certainly be experts on paranoia.
Second, minor spelling nazi: Derring-do.
Now, on to the rest. re GRRM: So, you're telling me a rich white guy who writes about rich white guy things, with 9 nominations and 6 wins says the system works perfectly? How shocking. (Okay, not entirely white--one of the dragons is black, yes?)
Also, for a man who boasts a master's in journalism, he was unable to articulate what the argument was about:
> GRRM said, If the Sad Puppies wanted to start their own award for Best > Conservative SF, or Best Space Opera, or Best Military SF, or Best > Old-Fashioned SF the Way It Used to Be whatever it is they are actually > looking for [emphasis mine] hey, I dont think anyone would have any objections to that. > I certainly wouldnt. More power to them. - See more at:
So I'd say any comment he had to offer failed due to ignorance.
Larry's point was proven the moment he agitated for a nomination and he was accused of raping puppies, burning puppies alive, abusing his wife, etc, by "tolerant" "liberals." (They keep using those words. I do not think they mean what they think they mean.) It got so bad his wife got contacts from old high school friends worried about her safety.
And there will be no red asterisk. The award winners will win based on votes, paid for (despite that being a quite elitist poll tax ) the same way all Hugo votes are paid for. If you believe bringing more, new voters in to read the works is a bad thing, then perhaps the previous years' Hugos should all be starred. And of course...let's assume something utterly out of left field, on no one's recommended list, written by the most liberal minority imaginable wins (As if the demographics of the author are relevant to the quality of the work)(in a field that's 85% female to start with, claims to the contrary notwithstanding), will that likewise get asterisked? Because if it's only certain works, not the entire ballot that get marked, I guess we've found the prejudice. I will congratulate any winner, as I always have. (And unlike a certain winner last year.)
But every blog post like this just proves who the whiners are. And what would such asterisk say? "These people won according to the letter of the rules, but we don't like it, so it's not legitimate." Way to prove the point yet again.
And for the record, when my Related Work, which reached #1 in political humor on Amazon, was proposed for the Hugo and blogged, it sold another crapton of copies and shot back into the top ten for the third time. So presumably, the people who paid for it actually did read it before nominating.
I'm sorry a few writers are such a threat to your happiness.
One final question for your consideration. News of this "flap" has reached the WSJ, the Guardian, and several other major international papers. Given that Joe Banker gives less than a nanofuck about the Hugo, as does anyone not in SF, and not even most of them ( ), why did it suddenly become a thing in The News?
Well, if you look at the articles, including your own, you'll find that pretty much none of them actually quote Larry or Brad, only the "defending" side.
Which does suggest that a very few agitators of one alignment sent press releases. And certainly neither Larry nor Brad did.
The information is all there. It just requires looking at points of view and sources that might disagree with your own. But I'm sure that fair-minded people will do exactly that.
And I'll leave you with this, for any "liberal" author who feels up to it:
I'm guessing that comment was directed at Bob Nelson ?
Am I the only person in the world who has never seen or had anything to do with the Game of Thrones?
I am a second . There may be more than 3 total ...
Didn't know it was a TV show till I first saw your question, and there are books?
Couldn't have been that good...
Mad Men? started out with a bang and did what all peters do once they've gone bang...
I've yet to get around to watching the last season..
So the issue is the size of one's potatoes ? Good to know ...
We seem to have similar tastes. I struggled through the first volume of Game of Thrones, but hey! If I want backstabbing and slaughter, I only need the news.
I never got started on Mad Men.
Welcome, Michael! I am honored by your visit. But not convinced.
No. I'm telling you that a person (whose age, sex, politics, and trophy room are irrelevant ) went through the Hugo winners to demonstrate the variety of winners, and to remind us just how good their work is.You, on the other hand, are ignoring Mr Martin's step-by-step analysis, in favor of an excommunication. Basically, you aren't disputing the merits of his case: you're refusing him entry to the courtroom. The technique is unbeatable: disagreeing is a disqualifying offense. You only recognize as "acceptable in the debate" persons who agree with you. Aperfect illustration of a self-sustaining echo chamber.
Ummm... There's also that little thing called Game of Thrones ... Now, I don't know at what level you are operating this denigration. I suspect that you didn't consciously hope to make us forget Mr Martin's oeuvre. As an author yourself....
No. Say rather that what he wrote did not concord with your own thinking. The paragraph you quote is, objectively, perfectly well articulated. Once again, you are avoiding the debate. You don't answer Mr Martin; you denigrate him.
You'd say "failed"... but without actually responding. It seems, once again, that your standard for success or failure is "agreement with Michael Z Williamson". This is a pity because your quote from Mr Martin expresses the nitty-gritty: The Sad Puppies set out to impose their own aesthetic standards on the Hugo process, and succeeded. The Hugo is now awarded for "best milSF". (Or perhaps worse yet: "best Baen author"
) Which is kinda narrow... and requires an asterisk.
Link?
You will always get the response you want... when you answer your own questions...
The asterisk will indicate "after Sad Puppies". The Hugos will never be the same again. Perhaps you have done a good thing in destroying the Hugos-as-they-were in favor of... whatever it is a Hugo is now. I assume you understood what the consequences would be when you launched Sad Puppies: "If I can't have one then no one will!"
Ah! Such sincere solicitude! Sincerity is a great virtue, isn't it?
But if you read my little article, you will notice that I am a Baen reader from way back. Including some books by a guy named Williamson. So Baen authors are hardly a threat to my happiness. On the contrary. The Chaplain's War is one of the best books I've read in a few years. I continue to pick up each new 1632 sequel. I visit the Bean ebook site regularly, to see what's new.
I don't fit your stereotype for "those who do not agree with you". In fact, I very much doubt that anyone fits it, except in your imagination.
I like "good books". The Hugo used to be a useful resource for meeting previously unknown (to me) authors. Now it will only point me to milSF authors. Amazon does a better job.
As for your complaint about the wide media coverage the Sad Puppies received... the word "paranoid" comes to mind. Hey! You blew away a seventy-year-old international institution. Did you think/hope that the operation would go unnoticed??
On this, we agree.
I checked this out. Fascinating!
Basically, you say "Write like me, think like me, be like me... and I will respect you."
I find that amazing.
And just in case anyone thinks I'm exaggerating... the link is there to let them go see for themselves...
Truly amazing...
No problem. It's so cool! This article dropped off the Front Page without a single Reply.
But apparently the Sad Puppies have Google Alerts (or whatever) set to advise them of anything posted online about the Sad Puppies / Hugos.
First Jon Ogden and Whatsis Cochrane (best known as "Julie's ex", Julie Cochrane being a Baen author) registered just to be able to respond.
Then I registered over at Baen's Bar, and returned the compliment, posting to a thread pretty much identical to Williamson's post... and bingo! Williamson shows up here the next day.
All for an article that had already fallen off the Front Page!
How cool is it???
And they're surprised when I say there's more than a whiff of paranoia about them...
Mad Men had good writers for the first three years (39 episodes = three seasons no wonder I feel ripped off) but it went way downhill after that
The sixth season was barely watchable. I've been told the seventh is even worse.
They aired the last episode, the finale last week...
Feronia,
There will be some follow-up. Our three drive-by trolls deserve another article, for their behavior since.
Stay tuned!
Hello again, Jon...
I don't see anything new in your post, but since you made the effort, I'll answer.
I mocked this phrase because it is so improbable. (In the "mathematical" sense.) Over the decades, I have met dozens of fans. Among such a number, who have each of them read hundreds of books since then, it simply isn't credible that every single one remembers...
Now, after my very short adventure over on Baen's Bar, I understand this a bit differently. In those few days, I realized that the Barflies / Sad Puppies are not figurative delusional paranoids, but literal ones. I am now willing to believe that your memory conforms to whatever you need.
All of reality conforms to whatever you need, so your own memory is a minor adjustment.
"I had to destroy the village to save it." Why did you know that a major said that? What makes the quote significant? It exemplifies several important ideas in so few words:
... whether spoken by a lieutenent or a major...
I spoke of John Ringo because he is the archetypal Baen author, a shortcut. Likewise, the "Ringo Faithful" is an image, not to be taken literally. Did you trulynot understand that?
I did not say "as having the power to ban you for all of Baen's Bar". In those two short days on Baen's Bar, I corrected this misunderstanding at least three times. I find very significant that you (and the other Barflies / Sad Puppies) simply ignore my explanations, preferring to persist in an erroneous interpretation that better fits your world-view.
I think this is important. When you first read my text, you decided what it meant. That interpretation is immutable. Even I, the author, cannot change it. So... What are we discussing, really? What I wrote, or what you believe? And when the two diverge, which do we follow?
No. Well... Not exactly, and the inexactitude is significant. You wrote "it appears". You did not write "it appears to me". The latter formulation would indicate that you realize that you are interpreting, and that you may have it wrong. The formulation that you actually used implies that your interpretation is the only one possible.
"Sullied" is not an everyday word. It is not used by accident. It carries strong notions of "dishonored". I don't see anything in my text to justify that. "Broken" certainly... Is there some reason for imagining that your people are seen in such a light?
I am also old enough to have done that. But I didn't. Did you? Because I have a very hard time imagining that someone who risked their life -- whose colleagues did actually die, and terribly -- would accept a comparison to an ego-trip bitch-slap-fest like the Hugo mess.
Seriously?
Same world-view. Same methods. Same perceptions.
I'd guess that there aren't many Sad Puppies who disagree with the Tea Party, or vice versa.
This said... I am not an expert on the Tea Party, and I would never waste the time to become an expert. If the assimilation upsets you... it might be interesting to explore the reasons.
Thank you for that clarification.
That's what happens when memories get old...
True. So I agree with Jon (oh dear!) that the reviews have to contain fairly specific explicit explanations.
Eric Flint also made some suggestions. He underscored the absurdity of a 40 000 word "novel" in today's market. He suggests recalibration of the categories, and perhaps getting away from a strict annual framework. I hadn't seen GRRM's proposal, but it dovetails nicely.
IMHO, a significant change in the Hugo categories would be a good way to get past the current mess.
Perhaps. But since Feronia and I agree about (approximately) nothing... I'm not sure we'd improve the situation a great deal.
)
I must say, this entire exchange is...
;^)
Pelosi is closer to Thatcher than to me...
Can I play?
War of the Worlds...
Followed by 2001, I am Legend and the Martian Chronicles.
But really I don't think this is a big deal. I have a unique knack at remembering things like the first time that I picked lint out of my bellybutton.
Since I am not a cross dresser... none. But I can tell you that I had a Hulk #1! Needless to say what happened to that. Same sad story as most.
I can't remember exactly. When I was a kid, wewere visiting at cousins over the holidays, and I found a batch of The Dr Who annuals. I read a bunch of stories in a gulp...I think I was maybe 10 or so??? But, yeah; no I can't remember the first one either.
My goodness, Jon!
What "vituperation"? What nastiness did I say that was not backed up by evidence?
Unlike some folks who mistake their presumptions for reality, I do not. I cannot "know" that SP and TP are highly like-minded, because I have no data, only speculation. I "suppose" that they are. I "guess" that they are. Using the word "guess" is intellectual honesty and proper English.
Do you believe that SP and TP would disagree a lot?
I do not understand how someone who took part in the deadly serious business of voter registration in the Deep South, where good people died in a high cause... can compare that action to the current back-biting and bitch-slapping about a literary award. How can you so demean Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman?
Excellent! This is exactly the problem! "What bothers you" is that I explain what the words actually mean, and my explanation does not fit your interpretation of them.
The amazing --significant -- point here is that you stick to your initial interpretation, disregarding my explanations. They are my words, but you know better what they mean than I do! You do not listen to me, because you know better than I!
This is the lesson I learned in my two days on Baen's Bar. Barflies do not listen. They do not need to listen because they KNOW.
... as you have once again demonstrated here...
I am so-o-o relieved, Larry. I was beginning to wonder....
Now there are two of us, carrying the eternal shame of not remembering a book from a half-century ago...
What is it with chics and belly button lint ... or should that be under the category "TMI" ?
Hi again, Jon... (Sorry I missed this yesterday...)
Do you disagree with the idea that Baen's Bar reflects Mr Ringo's vision of the world? Machismo, guns, and Ayn Rand? Seems obvious to me...
"... what did you expec t every to think when you wrote..." " I was banned for not agreeing with Mr Ringo's vision of the universe"? I expected people to think what the words say . I did not expect them to make stuff up .
If I had meant, "I got into an argument with John Ringo and was banned", then I would have written that. Since I did not write that, but you insist on it ... You are not conversing with me. You are arguing with a figment of your own imagination .
You are obstinately holding onto your imaginary construct, rather than learning about reality. There's a word for that: delusional.
Keep digging, Jon...
Um, Jon....
You are the one who came here to NT, just to answer my article. Along with your SP/Barfly buddies. Your buddy/commanding-officer MadMike ran a Facebook conversation dedicated to this article... until a spotlight hit it... Is he running another one now, better hidden from the light of day?
Oh, and... sorry about having missed your post yesterday... but I have an entire life away from the computer...
Ummm...
I'm suspended over there, too...
Lemme think just a sec...
"A good word" from BF..
Ummm....
Er.....
Very kind of you, but I'll pass...
It's hilarious really, getting all righteous about remembering one's first science fiction read. I bet some say they do, attempting to prove their bona fides; but, they may notactually remember at all.It seems here though, it was just something Jon Ogden was using merelyto be contrary.
Oh!
D'ya think??
That actually seems to fit !
Hi, Jon,
Our exchanges have become repetitive. I have gained what I wanted -- an insight into the way Sad Puppies / Barflies think, and I am grateful for any learning... but repetition bores me. And we know that adults almost never change their minds, so I don't expect my posts to have any effect on your own worldview. Any further exchanges can only be for the benefit of third-party observers... and I kinda doubt there are any...
But... one last try, because once again, your post is highly demonstrative of the phenomena I have been describing:
I asked: What nastiness did I say that was not backed up by evidence?
You answered: Just about everything you have said about me. But you gave not a single case! I am sure you perceive my words concerning you as "nastiness not backed up by evidence"... but that is your perception , rather than reality. There have been some unpleasant realities , each supported by proof .
You answered: I repeat: You are a bully. But you don't build a case . You simply affirm it. That is your affirmation , rather than reality.
You answered: It has become obvious to me that your response to anyone who disagrees with you is to become as confrontational as possible, to demean them and attack them (rather than their words or their ideas). Again... no cases, no evidence .
You affirm things -- I think that you honestly perceive them to be TRUE -- without ever supplying any supporting evidence.
The insight you have given me -- and once again, I really am appreciative for the learning -- is that for you, evidence is superfluous. You never present any evidence because you don't use evidence in drawing your own conclusions.
Any thesis that conforms to your preconceptions is TRUE, any thesis that does not conform to your preconceptions is FALSE. SP / Barfly thought process are easy to follow, once that simple rule is understood.
I asked: Do you believe that SP and TP would disagree a lot?
You answered: I have no idea, , and therefore would not presume - unlike you - to guess. On the other hand, since you admit you share the same lack of knowledge as I do...
Once again, you are misunderstanding my words in such a way as to force them to conform to your own preconceptions. I did not say that I have no knowledge. I said I have no data. I have no "statistically incontrovertible" proof. But I am an avid observer of the political scene, so necessarily I do have some knowledge.
I do not believe you when you say that you "have no idea".
You said; Given the general sloppiness of your writing, I am not surprised that you think you can claim you meant something else so frequently without anyone noticing.
I might be offended by "sloppiness of your writing" if it were even remotely true. Since I know that I use words with care, I conclude that the "sloppiness" is on the reading-comprehension side...
The amusing aspect of this is that I have never simply said "No, no, no! I didn't mean that! I meant this: ". In each case, I have explained the difference between what I wrote and what you took away.
And still you insist on your first interpretation! I, the author, tell you that you got it wrong and explain why ... but you continue to insist on your first interpretation!
The interesting question here becomes, "What's the purpose?" Why on Earth do you want to argue about what I meant? I'm the author! I know what I meant! It is utterly absurd to dispute the meaning with the author!
Now... if you think there's a "gotcha" somewhere in here... If you think it important to... someone, anyone... to show that I changed what I said, then be my guest! But please note that I have, at each, occurrence, explained why you misunderstood ... so in fact I would imagine that any third-party observer is reading this and nodding, "Yeah,..."
I'll give you a point here. Well... half a point, anyway...
There may be more than one species of Barfly. I've been speaking of the MadMike breed. I believe I have provided more than enough proof to establish my case concerning them.
I suppose that there may be Barflies who only frequent the 1632 parts... If there are, and if they do not share the delusional paranoia of the MadMike breed, then I present my apologies to them.
Now Jon... unless you have something new to contribute, I suggest that we stop this sterile back-and-forth. It has been fun, but repetition is tiresome...