william.scherk

I also know some basic conversational Objectivese. You say you "know" some basic Objectivese. Define Know. Are we to infer that you understand it, that you grasp it firmly, that you promise not to misunderstand, wilfully misunderstand, or misrepresent it? Hmm? And, WSS: are you also in a state of fully conscious awareness to fully consciously grasp that the ultimate value is Objectivism's survival? I'd like to take the epistemogical snarl of whether or not I "know" basic conversational Objectivese to chat, when Carol gets time. As for fully conscious awareness grasp of ultimate, well, no. Basic conversational Objectivish is "you make a pre-moral choice to live when you choose to suckle," or "even cabbages have morality," or "it's earlier than you think. Let's watch Charley's Angels."

I love English for its huge vocabulary and varied registers and accents. French I love for the feel of it in the mouth, its diction. Spanish I love for its simple orthography written and for the sensous variability in its accents and dialects. Why do you think you fell in love with English?

Carol, I am no Pollyanna, that's for sure. On the subject of AGW, I am sure there could be a long-running discussion that fairly deals with 'agnostic' and 'skeptic' arguments.

Thanks all for commenting on my resurrected blog. It can be lonely back here behind the front pages. Apparently the excellent OL blog software even lets me share administration tasks. I have made MSK an administrator, in case I ever get an AGW discussion off the taxiway and onto the runway and . . .

Jerry's original comment suggested Perigo was an agent provocateur. Hard to say. Who would pay him to provoke himself and his toadies and also-rans? But it is hard to tell the difference between a raging nutcase and a raging nutcase for hire. Robert's comment is apropos. The awe-inspiringness of Perigo is a given. We stand in awe before the Grand Canyon, the Pyramids, and I also stand gaping-mouth and trembling before the Full Fury of SOLO's Principal. Carol, jeepers, some of us have been reading Perigo for a few years. He has always pushed the limits of discourse up to and beyond the Red-line of Kookiepants Self-thwarting . . .

Wikipedia has a list of the most powerful earthquakes. I think you may mean to refer to the 1964 Alaskan Earthquake/Tsunami. This was the second-largest recorded quake at 9.2, and was centred near Anchorage (900km from Juneau). Your main point about relations between Earth's magnetosphere, high-energy photons/solar wind, core, crust, human life, and tectonic restlessness built into our globe -- quite compelling.

Fluent in English, near fluent in French, with Spanish a far-distant third in my language race, allowing me only terrifying duels with taxi drivers and muleteers. I also know some basic conversational Objectivese.

Edith Butler could clean Judith Butler's clock, I am sure of it. And I love the sound of Acadian French, having worked with a young lady in Montreal. J'allons et fi-ah-ire, mweh.

Your general observations may bear out, once IP160 gets back to editing or improving articles on Ayn Rand, Objectivism or subjects closely related. In this instance, though, I think you would need to do a quick review of the IP160 history to find right/left bias. From the beginning, IP160 made insertions, deletions and references without discussion with other contributing editors. That was the underlying problem. Additional problems came when it was revealed that IP160 orginated in the Valliant household -- then the insertions of references and quoatations from Valliant's book appeared self-serving. The topic bans resulted from a mix of these elements. As for the political bias of the editors or contributors who took issue with IP160, when you read up on the details you will realize that the majority of the editors were 'right'-leaning or attached to Randian/Objectivist thought where political biases could be detected. You may find evidence of a leftist bias among these Rand-influenced folks, or Rand-fans . . . but you would have to look and fork up the evidence to support your generalization with respect to the IP160 schmozzle. From my POV, based on a thorough review of IP160's posting history and subsequent bannings, the entire schmozzle could have been avoided if IP160 had tried to be collegial and to respond to requests, warnings, cautions, questions and other material on the discussion/talk pages. IP160 ignored everything -- all requests, questions, warnings, cautions, and found his/her/their 'edit-warring' stuff reverted and banned from posting on the subject for six months (until a fourth topic-ban, which has now lapsed). Now, as Robert reports, he/she/they are back posting, but so far avoiding the touchy subjects and activities that got him/her/them banned.

I do not understand why that household does not make an account at Wikipedia, or make two. But am encouraged that the household is coloring within the lines for now. At least we know he or they or she is reading the notes from angry villagers on IP160¨s talk page -- avoiding Wikipedia`s version of Go To Your Room And No Supper.

Yep, you decide the price of your participâtion. Me, I would give you green plus signs of approval but somebody turned off this feature. How about I give to the charity of your choice?

This is a placeholder for an ongoing experiment to open up discussion on OL. I am itnigued to see if anyone can answer a call to chat if we schedule an Open Mike Night or something. Some of us may be too crabby and suspicious to be right live conversation via keyboard. <a name="chatnow">OL Chatter Experiment</a> <IFRAME WIDTH="100%" HEIGHT="430PX" SRC="http://www.vdoc.ca/chat/chatIndex.php" TITLE="Chat Test WSS"> <!-- Alternate content for non-supporting browsers --> <H2>Your browser may not support this function</H2> <H3>If you do not see a chat window appear, please go to this link:</H3> <a href="http://www.vdoc.ca/chatchatIndex.php">http://www.vdoc.ca/chat/chatIndex.php</a></IFRAME>

Jerry, the only way to log in to read the chat is to log in to a SOLO account, so no, I believe that is his real awesome self.

Carol, no, you do not have to pay. In fact, you can be paid for participating here.

-- does this sound psychotically boring, or what?

I posted a new instance of LOW at my OL blog, WSS & Friends, in The Ick Factor (1)

When I first started posting at Online O-world forums, I used 'the ick factor' to signify an unquantifiable je ne sais quoi in certain Objectivish utterances, such as the initial ARI response to the Boxing Day Tsunami. Here's a sample of what gets chatted about from Ugh, Solopassion.com, with Lindsay at the helm. An openline show with your kookiepants grandpa. Rather revolting. This is the man with the red button. Blech. Ick ick ick. 04:46:57 Lindsay Perigo You're reading me? 04:47:34 Lindsay Perigo Heller—Babs's bitch. 04:48:15 Lindsay Perigo The rarest quality of all. 04:49:18 Lindsay Perigo REvenge dear. 04:49:49 Lindsay Perigo Even though Babs wasn't fucking Nathan, she hated that Ayn was. 04:50:35 Lindsay Perigo She got away with all those years of painting Ayn as a pathological ogre who drove her husband to alcoholism. Now shown to be lies. 04:50:53 Lindsay Perigo Yes dear. 04:51:13 Lindsay Perigo Beswick tried to bonk Colin????????!!!!!!!!!!!! Oooooooo, too funny!!!!!!!!!! 04:51:23 Lindsay Perigo Wot happened to that creature? 04:54:47 Lindsay Perigo Yes. Is there something to report? 04:55:48 Lindsay Perigo If so, use the private message facility. 04:56:45 Lindsay Perigo Ciao! 08:51:36 Lindsay Perigo Hello!

Coming up on five years since I posted this horribly gushy [redacted] item below. Quel embarras! <div><img style="float:right" width="241px" src="http://members.shaw.ca/wsscherk/imgz/the_blog_345.jpg">Sunny Days ahead . . . I find the . . . site to be very impressive, with so many tools for communication. Props to the team. I am coming to the faith that a truly free site . . . may be like a map of the world. Looking out through the . . . window on my monitor, I do believe that the varied strands of Rand-influenced thinkers and actors and scholars can build whatever communications they wish, here, through the window. A rather clownish person like me can retire to a blog -- a small, blue-ish pink, flickering window -- post occasional image-laden observations, experiment with different tones and tonics, accept essay commissions from my best critics, spend more time listening to music and working in the real world. Another person can inhabit the chatbox, or pepper popular threads with machine-gun one-liners. Yet another person can diligently apply her labour to expanding analysis in one of the less-read threads . . . and so on. It is a bit like a map, an index, a window on the world, this box on my table, this . . . box: yes, there are great continents, one dark, one light . . . but there are also smaller homelands, high mountain passes, navigable seas of long sweeping sands and intricate fjords and more; island redoubts, outposts and entrepots; vast archipelagos of opinion spattered like light across the surface of the globe . .</div>

Off the top of my head -- make posts regularly, at least once a day -- make posts interesting -- make posts comment-worthy -- comment on what interests YOU -- comment on popular OL topics and threads -- link to interesting older OL topics and posts -- do an interview once a month with an OLer -- regular 'Friday Nite at the Corral" type chats?

Is that for real? Mostly real, except that Chicago's Foster Avenue Beach was named after Foster Avenue. Vincent Walker Foster's body was found in Fort Marcy Park, which is in the state of Virginia. And of course, Gary J Chico is alive, having lost the Chicago election. Besides that, the humorous tidbit is as real as any other item "Adam Selene" posts for our disinformation on OL.

I tried an experiment with an inline IFrame that inserts a live chat widget inside a post. Click link for the result. Kind of cool. Now I would like to see if I can raise some interest for a reasoned discussion/debate of Global Warming issues . . .

I plan to start charging fees for those who read my comments in various threads. I plan to charge more for keen insights, and roughly average prices for run of the mill efforts. This will obviously be based on an honor system, although I will likely hector free-loaders and others with a "looter mentality." Do what Diana Hsieh does, and invite pledges (via Paypal). Seems to work for her. Now she gets no comments on her blog at all. Be that as it may, I would like to send you some money via Paypal so I can get pre-clearance to read your comments. I don't mind being hectored at all, at least not online. In real life, hectoring leads down that slippery slope to jeremiads, philippics and worse . . . <a name="chat">**</a>

In fact, here's an idea. We pay for the OL blogging feature and very few people use it. If I am not mistaken, an OL blogger can moderate comments to it. How's that for a moderated space for anyone interested? Great idea. Thanks for the reminder -- I will revisit my blog and try to start a discussion on my issue of interest. I can lay out the standing OL rules and then invite comment . . . and see where it goes. Next . . . I can take up a collection to pay to turn on the OL Chat feature. Maybe the bitchout snarkathons would be better played out there. Or, better yet, I can open up a daily Chat on my own server.

I wrote, Give us facts on Sharia in Canada, please.` It is not up to the Canadians on OL to provide warrants for your or Richard's claims, Adam. A sloppy, unreferenced, poorly-quoated excerpt from whereverthefuck is just that. I am not asking for you to cut your leg off. I am not asking you to turn back into a communist. I do ask you to consider waiting on posting. If waiting until you know the facts is a horrifying crimp on your style, then I suggest at the very least previewing your posts. That way you can see that a link has failed. Previewing can also show you where mistakes might be made by a reader. As I pointed out to you, your cut-and-paste from the mysterious blog mixes up your own words with the contents of that mysterious blog post; we cannot tell the difference -- it is unclear who wrote what, the unnamed whosit at whateverthefuckblog or you . . . One more suggestion, repeated: Read the last line from your Guardian link. If that fails to get you closer to the elusive FACTS, here is a direct and useful probe.