(urth) Wind god

[António Pedro Marques]

James Wynn wrote (05-11-2010 18:32):
>
>>>> Lee Berman- I don't know if you can speak for "people" but if I've
>>>> pissed you off, I apologize, though I'm not sure why what I wrote
>>>> upsets you. Or did you mean you were pissed off at Andrew, whose
>>>> idea I was going along with?
>>>
>>> Jeff Wilson- I won't unilaterally re-involve people by naming names,
>>> but if you truly don't recall the considerable irritation other
>>> listpeople have displayed at your methods of justifying previous
>>> "GUT" notions of yours, that would explain a great deal.
>>
>> António Pedro Marques - Given that Lee customarily says something to
>> the effect of 'sorry if I'm unintentionally doing that
>> (bending/falsifying the evidence)' and then does it again at the next
>> opportunity, I'm inclined to think it's a memory problem. Otherwise his
>> professing unintentionality would be dishonest, which I find hard to
>> believe.
>
> Anybody who has posted to this list for any amount of time is guilty of
> taking a phrase as expansive when it has a more narrow reading in
> context.

Not, however, of doing it again and again and again.

> (...) one should beware of ascribing malicious motives to people who
> proffer theories that you think are thinly supported.

Apples, oranges. Theories don't enter the picture. We're talking about 
facts. We're talking about a certain 'kind of selective reading'. The kind 
in which you write paragraphs about sentence X, ignoring the relevant data 
in sentence X - 1. Or you make a fuss about why word Y is used in passage Z 
and then it turns out that word Y doesn't appear in passage Z or at all. And 
some days after it has been pointed out that sentence X - 1 can't be ignored 
and word Y doesn't occur, you make recourse to the conclusions based on the 
false premises in order to support some other point. We've seen that happen 
a lot. And generally people find it irritating when their interlocutors keep 
adducing arguments that have previously been established as false (if word Y 
doesn't occur, then the argument based on its occurrence is wrong and that's 
all she wrote - or do you wish me to start calling you John and keep talking 
about the time you spent in Nepal and how they found your red hair unusual 
there?)

After all, we've never seen proof that the current President of the USA is a 
natural born citizen.