william.scherk

Are you talking about the Aswan Dam, Brant? If yes, what possible scenario for Israel attacking Egypt's dam do you foresee? The two countries are bound by a peace treaty -- I don't find any indication that blowing that dam is part of any Israeli strategy, nor can I suggest under what circumstances Israel would think it a smart or effective thing to do. On the subject of the Iraqi dam seized by ISIS forces (Mosul dam), it looks like ISIS will be forced from the dam under US attacks from the air and Pershmerga (KRG armed forces). The latest news today suggests this battle will be won against ISIS. They have at the moment few conventional arms to elude destruction from the skies.

Richard refers to an SBS program -- "Why are young Aussies joining the conflicts in Syria and Iraq?" It's well worth a viewing, especially for how the ISIS supporters among the studio audience act and speak and think -- how they justify jihad, how they are attracted to the killing fields in Syria and Iraq. There is a disconnection between the cruel reality of ISIS tactics and governance -- and what the ISIS supporters pretend it to be. If you don't want to watch the whole thing, note this story and excerpt, in which one ISIS supporter walks out of the studio. What struck me about the program (and the walk-off) was how uninformed, even stupid, were the ISIS supporters. Another thing that strikes me -- where are the Muslims who reject ISIS in no uncertain terms? I can answer -- right here, right there (in the Australian TV Studio). If we went out looking for Muslims who reject ISIS, or Islamic governments who reject ISIS, or religious authorities (such as they are) who reject ISIS -- and we will definitely find them -- does this count against assumption that this rejection is not enough? I would ask: how can we quantify? In other words how does Greg know the numbers of good and bad Muslims? How do any of us attempt to assay numbers? Does it matter that (in my opinion and according to my research) every official religious body of influence and consequence -- responsible for the Muslim faithful -- under various regimes, has rejected ISIS and its interpretation/perversion of Islam?

The police chief says that officer Darren Wilson did not know about the robbery, according to a report from Fox News Insider: Video of the chief also here.

Rather than everyone being played, I see it more as us being snowed under by facts, factoids, false facts and churning speculation. Check out the animated map below that depicts the explosion of discussion on Twitter following Brown's death and the initial arson and confrontation on the streets. I point to this only to remark upon how news stories can be accompanied by storms of attention, opinion and dross. This is via one of my favourite sites, CityLab. How news of #Ferguson spread across Twitter -- to the 'looks like thug' meme, there is also a sad/funny accompanying Twitter meme #IfTheyGunnedMeDown which picture would they use? (NSFW) eg, Yeah. The cops say struggle for gun. The witnesses say ... The dead guy "looks like a thug"? Perhaps. Can you explain "blunts are us"? I only know blunts to be a style of marijuana cigarette. I don't know if you mean 'Thug got killed. No prob' or something more nuanced. I hope we don't become like Greg -- thinking that everybody gets what they deserve as a function of a well-ordered moral universe. That could mean we are primed to accept a patchy police version of events (or inclined to take the witness testimony without salt or cynicism). I don't think we have enough details from that side to ponder that version's overall accuracy. In this case the companion of Brown acknowledges the robbery of the cigarillos. But he and the other witness say at least four shots were fired, one of which was in Brown's back, one of which was when he had hands in the air. The police story does not detail how many shots were fired. They should know this. The police have spoken of the initial autopsy, and let us know that Brown's body shows gunshot wounds, but not how many and not if any were in the back. It should not take a month to figure this out, in my opinion. I think one way of being played by information is trying to achieve a firm conclusion with not enough information. I don't know enough to conclude that Brown's death was anything other than justified, but I also can't yet conclude the shooting was justified and that the police are being forthright and straight with the public.

Did you read Rand Paul's opinion piece in Time magazine? It looks like he is establishing his own gravitas as a libertarian. Here's an excerpt, below. The Washington Post featured Volokh Conspiracy blog also covers libertarian reactions, and gives some shit to liberal tropes and cant -- "Libertarians have been anything but silent about police abuses in Ferguson, Missouri." CATO has been seeding the news media with its take on militarization of police forces; I didn't know how much energy CATO had been contributing to debate on your media down there. See their video highlights page. For a bit of bitter humour, we have the Onion's "Tips For Being An Unarmed Black Teen" ...

A story just out in the International Business Times says the Ethical Society of Police president and 18-year veteran of the Saint Louis Police Department, Darren R Wilson, is not the same Darren Wilson who works for the Ferguson police (who has worked for them over six years):

I'd call it reasoned and reasonable. If there are efficacious interventions that could improve the quality of life for someone like Sean, the only way to test them in this individual case is by trial and error -- though of course you will keep track of the general efficacy or particular efficacy claimed and delivered in other cases like Sean's. Correlation of gross longterm upward movement of metrics in autism diagnosis and increase of infant vaccinations may be assumed, but of course that isn't the real question at issue, is it? -- the question is whether vaccinations are causally related to Dxes of autism. The research I noted answers in the negative -- and it is only the largest and most comprehensive review to date. I think studies like this that look large and assess sold prospective data sets are very useful, good indications that I can safely set aside the hypothesis that autism is caused by vaccination. I will tell you what changed my opinion on the whole etiology question from a rather distant agnosticism -- the case of Andrew Wakefield.

As I see it, there is one basic attitude which precedes and leads to all of the evil done in this world: blaming others Within this context, I define blame as: The angry unjust accusation of others for the just and deserved consequences of our own failure to do what's morally right. The most powerful weapon we possess is our ability to observe the thoughts which pass through our head and the emotions we feel as the result of being immersed in those thoughts. Quiet calm self awareness. The willingness to see ourselves as we truly are. The realization of the truth that our emotional pain is self inflicted... and that what we send out to others returns to us. These are nice preliminary notes. I'll tell you though that I won't be sending any depressive folks to you for counselling or advice just yet. It doesn't seem you have much to say to them but that they need to find their own way, that their emotional pain is self-inflicted. Perhaps you could add some more notes and put them in order of steps you would take to effectively counsel someone away from failing to do what's morally right. On the topic of the Big Bad Narks and their fiendish psychoactive drug-peddling, I wonder: what do you think of Lithium for manic-depression? If that's too specific for you, what do you think of manic-depression in general? If you had any helpful tips for manic-depressive folks cycling madly, they would sure be interesting to review.

It's a peer reviewed journal of the Edward Jenner Society "for vaccines." I'm for vaccines too. Just differently than in any blanket way. I don't know why you're pissed. Of course they're a "shill" for the industry. Sure, they are a shill for the 'industry' in the same way that Cardiology Journal is a shill for 'industry,' or Pediatrics a shill for industry ... or any other specialized journal. Every journal in, say, pediatric oncology shills for Cancer ('We need more cancer! More attention needs to be paid to my area of research! No, mine!"). Journals on Geophysics, Astrobiology, Statistics, Pharmacology, and on and on, Shillerama. On a lesser footing, The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies shills for Objectivism. The editors just circle and jerk the same way every journal's circle jerk themselves into a frenzy of shilling for the Ayn Rand industry. (I am being ironic -- a subject of study does not automatically make its corps of studiers into shills for this or that industry; a subject of study is a subject of study) What you haven't mentioned is the devil of the details. When you examine a few instances and the range and type of articles printed in Vaccine, you will see that the normal process of science is underway. Hypotheses are tested. Claims are tested. Vaccines safety studies are published. Shitty vaccines register disappointing results. Cancer vaccines work here and there. Gene-therapy vaccines are detailed, probed, established as efficacious or not. Brant, I am not pissed, just disappointed to think you may curb your inquiries by fallacious reasoning. This doesn't make sense. The study in question was neither for nor against vaccines. It put a hypothesis to a test, a rigorous test, and it found it wanting. The small point I was hoping you would see, Brant, was that it was a study worth examining -- it is not long -- and worth at least the usual questions you ask of any research whatsoever: is it interesting, is it properly constituted, is it valid, is it reliable, is it warranted, is it free from bias, does it support its conclusions with its data ... and so forth. Ultimately, if you accepted that the study may have been done in good faith and to a good purpose (answering a topical and important question), we could examine its conclusions and have a good discussion.

It's fair to say that no correlation has been found between infant vaccination and autism. That's cold, hard reality. It's fair to say that the cause of autism spectrum disorders is currently unknown. There is a problem here and there in America (fewer outbreaks in Canada) of local childhood disease outbreaks that can be traced to lack of immunization. I don't envy new parents who are fearful of vaccines, who fear autism, who are faced with moral decisions. It's not an easy issue to navigate. As you point out, there is plenty of passion and a hard dose of extremism (or perhaps better called extreme disempathy) in a few pockets, and the passion on either 'side' is not an indication that this position or that position is credible or ratified by scientific investigation. I don't want to be part of the demonizing culture. I want to use the tools of reason as best I can to sift through the chaff for the most reliable information. I don't know what other tools we have but reason to solve the mysteries of autism. I do think it is important to give sober hard looks at the best studies to date, so that we and parents are reliably informed about risk of autism from vaccinations. I do give a fuck about what is right and what is wrong ... and I think a passion for finding truth and eliminating error is a fine passion to have. Married with reason, humbled by mysteries, allied with patience and determination, this passion for reliable knowledge about the world is what I think unites me, you, Michael, and most other folks here. Perhaps we can do better in using passionate reason here, learning from each other, criticizing illogic, discarding canards and unsubstantiated claims, analyzing and integrating facts and theories, but I don't know how.

To find out the answer, you need to click on the link provided. Okay, Brant. If you refuse to consider findings published in a specialist scientific journal sight unseen -- without bothering to read anything of the study, then my arguments and questions are wasted on you. Using a term like 'shill for the vaccination industry' is poisoning the well, evasive and fallacious.

Not much. There appears to be some correlation, but causation is another kettle of fish. If you mean a simple correlation between a purported increase in vaccinations and a rise in cases of autism, this is not clear. Autism may be more rigorously identified (recall how recently has western medicine become aware of autism as a distinct disorder) and so we may not be seeing what some call an 'epidemic' or unusual increase in prevalence at all. In the stricter general sense, nobody has demonstrated a persistent correlation between actual vaccinations and actual cases of autism. By this I mean a particular parent may claim a correlation between her own child's early vaccinations and a following diagnosis of autism. This correlation may be (probably is) spurious, but not in and of itself. It is spurious when the correlation is generalized to the cohort of vaccinated children. Say for argument's sake, in the mother's case, she cannot be convinced that the two things are not necessarily related, that vaccines are not causative. It may be that she is right about her child's acquiring autism as a result of vaccination (though the mechanism is obscure, unproven or absent in all models), but the proper test is to examine the larger cohort. Even if vaccination carries only a slight risk of potentiating autism, the relation between vaccination and autism should be apparent, starkly apparent in the aggregate. And it isn't. The latest study to find an absent correlation between the two was published this year in Vaccine. It was the largest and most comprehensive attempt to find a pattern between vaccinations and autism. It found no correlation whatsoever. From the study's highlights: There was no relationship between vaccination and autism (OR: 0.99; 95% CI: 0.92 to 1.06).There was no relationship between vaccination and ASD (autism spectrum disorder) (OR: 0.91; 95% CI: 0.68 to 1.20).There was no relationship between [autism/ASD] and MMR (OR: 0.84; 95% CI: 0.70 to 1.01).There was no relationship between [autism/ASD] and thimerosal (OR: 1.00; 95% CI: 0.77 to 1.31).There was no relationship between [autism/ASD] and mercury (Hg) (OR: 1.00; 95% CI: 0.93 to 1.07).Findings of this meta-analysis suggest that vaccinations are not associated with the development of autism or autism spectrum disorder. Can you point to where other informed folks see the big problem? I mean, is there strong evidence that current vaccination schedules do not do what what they are supposed to -- immunize against full-blown diseases -- or evidence that babies' immune systems are 'overwhelmed' in any way? IOW, what do you know about vaccine-overwhelmed infant immune systems, and can you share?

Good point. I need to clarify that I'm referring primarily to psychotropics... You can make a case against (most) psychotropics by invoking religious and moral dicta: "Your body is a temple. Do not defile God's house with poisons" "Psychotropic drugs merely mask symptoms" "Psychotropic drugs harm more than they heal" "Only bad things can come from psychotropic drugs." This case is made in Christian Science, Scientology and other religious traditions. The case is not built on systematic, comprehensive study of pharmacology or particulars of therapeutics. It does not and need not examine the psychotropics one by one. It does not need empirical support to be held true. (it need not exclude so-called botanicals or homeopathy or 'supplements'). If we are talking only about suicidal depression, you can make a case against the use of SSRIs or other families of anti-depressants. You can argue that understanding and alleviating serious depression needs no drugs, that many episodes of serious depression resolve themselves within six months. You can further argue that 'natural' means are the best means. You could probably find support for the 'natural means' (eating well, sleeping well, exercizing) of alleviating depression in most instances (in self-help, education and awareness, self-assessment tools, public information, best-practice guidelines, official AMA announcement, the literature on depression treatment, etc). You can find much support for cognitive-behavioural therapy. You can make a fair case that 'talk' therapy should be first and foremost in any active response to serious depression. So, I'm not too bothered by a rejection of drugs as useful, reliable or necessary to treating depression on moral or religious grounds. What I am interested in now are the next steps in Greg's notion of therapeutic alleviation of depression, how he suggests the underlying anger be dealt with. Ie, what are the mechanics, how would it work? If he has faith in his understanding of depression and depressive syndromes -- potentially self-healing, deadly serious but perhaps not chronic or intractable -- it would be cool to see what kind of conversations or dialogues he would recommend for the sufferer, how he would humanely handle someone in the midst of this state of pain. It could be that his interventions would accord with the most common and useful non-drug interventions. I think there would be a lot of overlap with recommendations made by mainstream medicine. -- Greg, you suggest you have indeed seen enough (or felt enough) real serious depression to understand it well. What were the outcomes, were any successful outcomes due to your intervention or handling? How did you manage to beat your own depression, if you were referring to your own? I'll put off discussing your puzzling comments about manic-depression/bipolar and post-partum depression. And perhaps some time in the future we may get around to solutions to brain/mental disorders or states like schizophrenia, epilepsy, obsessive-compulsion, sociopathy, phobias

What do you know about the link between vaccination and autism?

Yeah, Bob... that's the monkey paradigm. If people could only ingest just the right combinations of pharmaceuticals, heck, they'd be just fine. You have been corrected on 'the monkey paradigm' but you persist ... it is funny that you pretend depression is some aspect of being ungodly. Who knows what aphorism you would trot out for mania or bipolar. Or post-partum depression. Or any other crippling condition that afflicts people godly and not.

Depression can kill. Depression is only a symptom, not a cause. Traced back to its source, you find anger. I assume you have never suffered a serious bout of depression, Greg.

Depression can kill.

Don't know how I missed this until today: one example from the world's most perfectly awful album art, and a paean to zombiehood.

Michael, thank you for the effort at calming waters I have roiled and for assuring me I am a good man speaking in good faith. You took the time to develop and lay out your argument, so I feel bound to reply in detail. This post will probably exhaust my interest in all the issues raised here over the last couple of days.** Marc has graciously noted his comment was wrong, so the rest of my angry self-righteous rant may be safely surfed on by none but extreme WSS fans. That being said , I will take another opportunity to state that my comment should not have been posted , it was wrong and I do see how a comment like would most certainly have bothered me if someone made such a blanket statement . It will not happen again . I do not agree that asking for "naming names" is bullying. If I pointedly assert that some folks in this thread use word games and deception to hide a throbbing Hatred for the Muslims in their hearts, then anyone is well within his rights to ask "who are you talking about, please, William?" If I then retort that the Muslim-Hating is obvious, that you need to do your homework, it is quite fair to challenge me with smearing unnamed people. Let's say I meant that Jason, Malcolm and John were Muslim-hating ... by not naming them explicitly the charges get spread over the commentariat. Joseph, Malcolm and John are not able to defend themselves against the charge. That's a lot of insulting and contempt you are attributing to Marc. Not just everyone on this thread and the readers, but both Inquiry and Reason in their anthropomorphic states. You are reiterating my point. I argued in one post that Marc should identify those people in this thread that he had accused of hatred of the Jews. In my opinion It was reasonable to ask him to name the miscreants. No, it struck me as not germane to my questions. The man apologized. Where are your manners? Don't you accept an apology when it is proffered? I was curious to find out who were the three or four OLers who raised Marc's ire. That apology gave no clue -- and he had not retracted his claim at my writing. To "manners," I could argue that Marc had been guilty of 'bad manners' in not naming the miscreants -- his own retraction suggests that would be right. That line of apology did not retract the charge and so answer my objection. The apologies alone, moreover, told us just that he was sorry for offence taken. Preceding his apology was this repeat of the charges: I just scanned through my posts over the 27 pages of this thread and it is very obvious where the dishonest gambits are . I am not going to start a flame war here and repost the issues that are incorrect . When I or someone else jumped in and attempted to correct said posts , these 3 or 4 posters simply never responded to the historical facts . They either moved on , or started to play word games . I respect MSK too much to go over 27 pages and start to repost stuff that is there for folks to check if anyone desires to see what points have been made . Again , I ask you to do your homework and not tell me to check the pages just to repost everything here and get certain folks upset . I stated the truth, believe it or deny it I spent the time reviewing the thread, since Marc had not at time of writing either retracted or named the Jew Haters. I now believe that Marc meant a number of these people: George H Smith, Brant Gaede, Stephen Boydstun, Krell , Samson Corwell ... Marc singled out only George and Brant for 'word games' so I can't guess who is the third and fourth Jew Hater. So, as to "attributing motives to people that they don't actually believe" -- I say Marc did this, assigned Jew Hatred as motivation to those named above. So, is attributing Jew Hatred to people who don't actually hate the Jews ... er, "nothing more than discursive masturbation in public"? Or what? I am having a hard time feeling this "self-righteous anger" you attribute to me, Michael. Let's say I did feel anger at what I thought was an unjustified smear. Let's say that anger was evident in the two posts I made challenging Marc to name the names of the guilty. What makes it an evidently self-righteous anger? Self-righteous strongly implies a false superiority, a falsely-grounded holier-than-thou attitude and a type of moral hypocrisy -- that the self-righteous person when condemning or criticizing another person or his acts behaves in violation of the very righteous conduct he claims to uphold. So, this would mean (If I understand your repeated use correctly) that my presumed anger is more than misplaced, it is unjustified and deceptive. To return to the point: naming names. I submit there is nothing intrinsically self-righteous in asking, even demanding, that we do the reasoned and reasonable thing -- attach charges to actual persons. Well, this is no good. "Those who still remain unnamed" are most probably as I cited above, George, Stephen, Krell, Brant, moi. Your paragraph is useful for again illustrating my point: Who makes a slur against certain posters/Jews ... . Who? Who then 'backs off' from the slur? Who? Which words are we talking about in the here and now? Because Marc told me to do my homework -- that the poison (of Jew Hate) was obvious to any eye that looks, that anyone could find instances of what he charged, I did a review. I think I did make a proper case for 'naming names' of those whose arguments are poisoned by Jew Hate. I believe that after you give my arguments a second thought, you will agree with that. It doesn't sound redundant to me ... it sounds a bit misplaced, and a bit unmoored from particulars. In this case, of course, Marc says it won't happen again. I am gratified that my effort had an effect. That's not nothing. Michael, using terms like "these last" is beggaring the question -- and tending to prove my contention -- as you do not establish the real people and arguments "these last" apply to. This compounds the problem as I saw it: using unmoored charges against 'certain people' to support Marc's argument of "said posters" ... I will reiterate -- accusing of obvious JewHate while refusing to identify 'said folks' was wrong, specious. You do not address this point. You have dressed me in the habit of self-righteous anger but I think avoided my objection. Now ... do I want Marc to be 'exposed'? No, that does not make sense. Do I want Marc to be 'punished'? No ... how can anyone on an online forum be punished by more than verbal spanking? It's all words and emotion, from which any of us can take a step back at any time. As for anger -- I suggest this is your mislabeling, not what I feel. But let's use your term, and apply it to the context: Have I demanded (righteously) that people attach names to their arguments in other contexts (eg, in cases where the slurs are advanced against Jews and the Joo and the Joo lobby)? Have I used my so-called self-righteous anger against the anti-Joo bullshit I have read at OL? Yes, I have. Yes indeed. Whether harrying ARI-Mark for his specious arguments against the Joo, or taking Wolf DeVoon to the proverbial woodshed for the same thing ... or slapping around Serapis Bey on the same grounds, yes. I can't parse this. "Using euphemistic rhetorical devices that embed (Cover Your Ass), but still promote an agenda" -- I have not found that in reviewing this thread, or rather, I am not sure I can find an instance of this in the thread: it could mean almost anything. I don't ignore others when they do the same thing: make a charge against "some people" without indicating who is signified. I have criticized you for the same thing, from time to time. If I remember correctly, my strong challenges to Wolf's "National Joo Free Day" or whatever it was caused him to back off OL for a good long time. I was missing who Marc was accusing, until I did a thorough review of this thread. Again this just pushes cogent objections into the shadows. I see that. It looks like you agree with Marc's initial slinging of the accusations, and consider them correct even if retracted. I see that, but I don't understand that. In any case, I have not and do not accuse Marc of hypocrisy. I argued that he made poorly-warranted accusations ... Well, by the loose criteria Marc had given us, miscreants still stand exposed as at least anti-Jew (in hiding). Now that you and Marc have identified the errors (resorting to rhetorical games to express anti-Jew agenda), and we have the names of the likely suspects, we can put the charges to the test, no? George, Stephen, me, Brant, Krell, Samson, we can all either accept the charges of being anti-Jewish, or put up a defence. -- this paragraph is moot. It seems clear of course that nobody is any longer being accused of anti-Jewish motives! I don't get this. Who are you talking about? You don't support the gambit of accusing "unnamed people"? Save yourself the trouble and just click the links I selected above: Krell, Stephen, George, Samson, Brant, perhaps me. I think you bow back as far and as long as you can. Compared to the regimes at OO.org, RoR and the death-rattle SOLO, you have the lightest touch of all by far. By far. You rarely threaten the red button -- and that is what makes OL the better of all the others combined. It is the best of O onine, open and free with clearly designated exceptions for the Brandens and bigotry. Could you have misunderstood my objection in the first place, maybe? If I tell you that I objected to unspecified charges, and you say I objected to hypocrisy, who is correct? Just you? I submit that I do not think Marc is a hypocrite, far from it. He is forthright. He doesn't say one thing and do another. He is cute around the net at times, but that is to be celebrated. When he finds hypocritical nonsense embedded in actual anti-Israel cant, or when he finds hypocritical nonsense coming from champions of Hamas, I think it is great. I'm in favour of Marc exposing instances of hidden motives and throbbing hatred -- that they can be ruthlessly critiqued. Anyway, I had little more to say until I read this corrective from you. Forgive me for the boring line by line, but I always find it important to explain my reasoning as fully as I can, even at the risk of going on at far too lengthy length. I stand with you strongly in speaking out against bigotry. I stand by my own multiple comments on Joo-baiting and blaming over my OL years. I wish no ill to Marc. I made my point, and I think it stuck. ______________________________ ** It is freaking hot here on Vancouver's border with the USA. Our lawns are yellow, our discomfort starting to be apparent, our pets listless, our ice cream sales peaking, the smell of burnt meat awaft in the land. Though I do not have a hammock, and our beach is a mile away from our garden, this is me for the rest of the day.

Thank you, Marc.

Well, that's a key point where we each differ in our views, Bob. You use monkeys as your behavioral model... and I don't. Greg Bob uses the most general term, primate, that describes a vast range of animals who share ancestry. Humans are classified along with the 'great apes' as the most intelligent of all the primates. Our closest relatives include the chimpanzees, the gorillas, and the orangutans. We are much more distantly related to the 'monkeys' ... The great findings in paleontology tell us that our species is a very special remnant of a very special instance of primate evolution, the only surviving species of miraculous adapters, Homo, man, the last survivor or the great vanquisher. We stand astride the world in every way, all other animal life utterly under our command and control. In other words, as Primates Mark Two, we are profoundly human in distinction to other primates, having things like language, culture, religion, invention, logic, mathematics, science that are absolutely absent in even our nearest relatives. Although we may style ourselves gods, in our humanity we retain much of our ancestry -- what we share with lesser primates are our lusts, our aggressions, our jealousies and our kin structures. It is this indisputable independent reality that Bob remarks upon. Translated to religionese, this could also indicate an original sin, a base nature. And that would tie in nicely with your views, Greg. Yes, you agree with Bob, yet still mark yourself off as more informed and holy. Funny that. I expect you have no truck with evolution, and likely little understanding of it.

Bill, did you notice whether it was purchased by universities/colleges/etc. for assignment to classes. Nope, and I don't know how to get at those particular metrics. Books will always bought by institutions for their libraries, ballyhooed or not, I figure, so that may be a constant factor, subject to a few swings. I will say putting Piketty's book on a course reading list seems cruel and unusual indeed. Of course this book has the allure of food for economists (who are still masticating its contents and yammering about it), but these surely are special kinds of humans, like mathematicians.

The book is sitting on my shelf, giving me a baleful look right now (it's a library copy, I was the thirteenth in the reserve line, it seems newer than new). I am afraid of it. I can't even claim to have finished the Illustrated Brief History of Time. Reisman is good writer. I'm going to take the time to re-read his review carefully. I think it will stand in for Objectivist reaction for some time, since he has actually plodded through the beast to the end. Any splashy, touted, notable, notorious, or 'very important' book can slip back from the edge of Astonishingly New, and still maintain sales and attention. A search of Google News shows plenty of interest this month in Piketty, plenty of discussion, plenty of reviews. It is still on the top sales charts for business/economics books, and still in the top twenty non-fiction bestseller lists. And it is still looking at me.

Marc asserts some people in this thread harbour hatred of the Jews, but dishonestly hide that hatred. I've highlighted his very strong claims. "Said posters" being who, Marc? I think you should name them, or identify or quote their dishonest gambits. Otherwise you run the risk of slurring more than just 3 to 4 of us who are heretofore nameless. It is very evident to anyone who reads through all the thread . There are a tremendous amount of points that are factually incorrect here . Do your own homework , read , then you will clearly see what I am speaking about . -- 'points that are factually incorrect' is entirely different from Jew Hatred. It is fallacious to plunk in a new criteria to your argument post facto. I object to your reticence. You assert a claim and then reverse the onus of providing warrants for it. You state that three or four OLers signaled hatred for Jews in this thread, that they have hidden behind word games in so doing -- but instead of demonstrating instances of said hidden hatred, you suggest it's someone else's job to provide them! Marc, if your ugly contention is actually true then it should be easy for you to point to particular posts that rankled. But that your personal 'Jew Hate' detector may have pinged does not mean anyone has to accept those instrumental readings -- especially when you will not share that information! So, waving hands at a 530-odd block of comments and saying "there's your evidence of Jew Hate!" is doubly insulting. It maintains the existing slur of Jew Hate over everyone who contributed comments, and it shows contempt for inquiry. In other words, you insult not only your readers but also Reason.

"Said posters" being who, Marc? I think you should name them, or identify or quote their dishonest gambits. Otherwise you run the risk of slurring more than just 3 to 4 of us who are heretofore nameless. Using a word like "attack" where "criticism" may be more apt and inclusive is one gambit I don't like. So, when you further accuse hidden "hatred against the Jews" amongst OLers, isn't it eminently fair that you name names or cite said hypocrisy and deception? (is it me, is it Adam, is it Wolf Devoon? Is it Darrell, is it Michael, is it Brant or Carol or PDS? I say we ought get to the bottom of this hatred ...)