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Dark Knight / Le Chevalier Noir
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---- Nous avons besoin d'un traduction français!
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I regret the decision to remove Paul Bonham from my ignore list. No wisdom was ever uttered by Paul Bonham. Henceforth I will read Paul Bonham only in the quotes of others.
Well, as they say, if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Vlad Drkulec and others like him will continue to go through life believing certain things in the face of totally contradictory evidence and facts, and will ignore anyone who disagrees. This is the kind of person we have as CFC president.
Brad Thomson will never report the CFC to any authority (i.e. Ontario Human Rights Commission) as being sexist for having women-only events. Even though Vlad Drkulec is now on record as saying such exclusionary events are discriminatory.
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
Just for my own confirmation, I Google searched with the keywords "Is it a fact that the mainstream media is left wing". One result (the first one) was wikipedia's entry on media bias in the United States; bear in mind that many think wikipedia itself has left wing bias:
Kevin, I do not fully understand the distinction between right and left when it comes to politics. Certainly those on the right are stronger supporters of capitalism, free markets and competition, whereas those on the left are stronger supporters of socialism, controlled markets and cooperation. The right believes we should fight against others for our money, the left believes we should share rather than fight, at least to some extent. But once money is not a part of the question, I get confused.
For example, those who are pro-choice in the abortion debate are said to be from the left, while those who are pro-life are said to be from the right. I do not understand why this is the case. Those who were against same-sex marriage were said to be coming from the right, while those who supported same-sex marriage were said to be coming from the left. Again, I am not sure why this is the case.
My own opinions on questions such as these are sometimes from the left, or even the extreme left, but they are sometimes from the right, or even the extreme right.
So I am not sure about media bias overall being from the left or from the right. There was certainly a bias in favour of Clinton over Trump, and by some definitions this amounts to a bias in favour of the left.
And what about the long history of American warmongering? Jean Chretien recently stated that the Americans talk about freedom and say they fight for it, yet they support any dictator who leads a right-wing system, and they try to destroy any freely elected left-wing government. In other words, they support capitalism and fight socialism, freedom is just a word. So right and left have their own meanings here.
In the interpretations of the metaphysician Hegel, there are those who are considered as left-wing Hegelians and those who are considered as right-wing Hegelians. The left interpret Hegel as suggesting that God evolves over Time, while the right interpret Hegel as suggesting that God was fully evolved in the first place. I consider myself to be a left-wing Hegelian.
Paul, I believe I have called you an idiot, an imbecile and a moron. But I have never said that I thought you were stupid. ...
This may be the funniest pair of sentences I've ever read on ChessTalk. What makes them extra humourous is that I suspect you, Brad, will have to think about why they're funny.
... So, I am now calling you a LIAR. ...
Nice. And in capital letters! But you're not a hypocrite, right Brad? You never gratuitously and sanctimoniously insult people, right?
Just because you didn't like Paul's satirical piece is not nearly a good enough reason for him to be banned. Paul has initiated a lot of interesting discussion on ChessTalk. That's certainly not the case with you.
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." - Aesop
"Only the dead have seen the end of war." - Plato
"If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination." - Thomas De Quincey
As far as God goes, I don't know what it means for him to evolve, but I suspect he addresses the times if and when he intervenes in the world. If he appeared to Moses from a burning bush long ago, for example, in modern times he'd appear to them, say, on a television, perhaps posing as a preacher, dressed in a suit & tie, and looking relatively mature but still youthful in age, without wearing eyeglasses. :)
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy's law, by Edward A. Murphy Jr., USAF, Aerospace Engineer
This may be the funniest pair of sentences I've ever read on ChessTalk... But you're not a hypocrite, right Brad? You never gratuitously and sanctimoniously insult people, right?...
My intent was to try to be funny with those sentences, I fully admit that. I do not believe that I have been gratuitous with my insults since any time I insulted others it was only after they insulted me first, then I apologized and they did not. Of course I am sanctimonious.
"Many people recommend you simply ignore trolls and don’t respond in any way, but this gives the trolls even more power as it gives them the power to silence you. Instead, ignore the troll but address the problem with the “audience” in a matter of fact way. Do NOT respond in a manner that stoops to the troll’s level or you risk two outcomes: 1) Feeding the troll and engaging in an unwinnable argument that will escalate, or 2) having the “audience” see you as another irritant/troll rather than as the balanced, decent and aggrieved party. "
Insightful comments Rene. Sometimes it is difficult to identify a troll. If they post a response that you find ridiculous, but they honestly believe it, is it still trolling? I guess not, but is it worth the effort to convince them otherwise? Probably not.
Last edited by Bob Gillanders; Sunday, 15th January, 2017, 04:47 PM.
As far as God goes, I don't know what it means for him to evolve...
I am not sure that I do either, but here is one example. Jehovah wants to create a being in his own image. He tries cro-magnon but that does not work. Next, he invents homo-erectus, not quite. Then he stumbles upon homo-sapien, bingo! At first, God did not know how to do it, eventually He/She did. This is learning, or evolution in a sense. Importantly, it plays out over Time, or, Jehovah is in Time, not out of it.
Just because you [Brad Thomson] didn't like Paul's satirical piece is not nearly a good enough reason for him to be banned. Paul has initiated a lot of interesting discussion on ChessTalk. That's certainly not the case with you.
I do appreciate that one person on ChessTalk, Peter McKillop, has the cajones to say that I've actually done something worthwhile here on ChessTalk, while another (Nikolay Notitsyn) has an equally bold willingness to stand up to the false logic and deeply ingrained biases of Vlad Drkulec.
The original post was meant as satire of the silliness that people can engage in both here on ChessTalk and in general. If anything that I wrote in that original post should be "banned", then so should about 80% of our movies, plays, TV scripts, novels. Just think how many Seinfeld scripts could be considered offensive to some group or another. All of them, I would think. And Monty Python, one of the greatest comedy troupes of all time.... totally offensive to somebody in almost everything they did! But the point of all these things is not to be offensive. It is to point things out, to put things in a different light, and (in the case of my satire here and I would think most of Monty Python's work) to make people realize that certain things are taken way too seriously.
"Stop this skit, it's getting too silly!" is one of the Python troupe's signature lines. "You're no fun anymore!" is another one. That is their message.
If you value free speech, you will realize that it allows us to have Seinfeld and Monty Python and so many others and that we are enriched by these. The fictional CBS TV character Archie Bunker was villified by many in the 1970's. But the writers and producers pressed on, CBS kept it on the air, and good for them. Archie Bunker represented real, living people who held real biases and were really racist. When we see it presented to us as Archie Bunker, we begin to understand how silly it all is. And it is my opinion that Vlad Drkulec is Archie Bunker, allowing that the exact biases of each may not all match up. There could be a show "All In The CFC Family" and Vlad could be Archie.
But equally important is the judgment of what exactly is offensive. Anyone can be offended by anything, and the grounds for being offended can also be anything and can be considered trivial by others. That is the nature of the human beast. Some are offended by "Eskimo" and some of the same essential group are offended by "aboriginal" and some of the same essential group are offended by "Inuit". It's all silly, because none of those 3 words are meant pejoratively. There are words that are meant pejoratively, and we all know what they are, but these 3 words are not in that category, and neither is "midget" nor "transgender" nor "albino".
If you ignore my choice of those terms in my original post then there is nothing offensive to any one of those groups in that satire. Nothing at all is said ABOUT transgenders, ABOUT midgets, ABOUT Eskimos, ABOUT albinos. Therefore Vlad Drkulec's "outrage" about racism and homophobia in that post are totally groundless and are used simply as tools to win over people to his view. These are the psychological tools that Vlad uses, and he uses them without conscience or thought.
I am happy to report that I destroyed Vlad Drkulec in this thread. All he could do at that end was to scurry away with his tail between his legs, regretting that he took me off his ignore list. Yes, Vlad Drkulec has an ignore list -- that alone tells you all you need to know, if you are a person with any critical thinking facility at all. I myself have no ignore list, and cannot conceive of such a thing, and discourage anyone from having one. I want to hear what everybody has to say, and you should too. Learn from everything around you!
Ok, now it's time for....
WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?
(1) Brad Thomson is a hypocrite and has little critical think ability. He doesn't want there to be women-only chess events, because this unfairly excludes men and so is sexist. But he admits men are not harmed in any way -- IN ANY WAY -- by women-only events. He doesn't even realize those two views are 100% contradictory. But the hypocrisy comes in when he expects that someone on this forum, presumably Larry Bevand, should ban me or at least remove this thread. In other words, Brad Thomson wants to be the "thought police" and decide what is acceptable here on this forum, even if it means banning certain persons or (gasp!) groups. It makes sense then that if all women posted here that they disagree with his views on women-events, he would want to ban them! It is unnerving that someone who posts here about deep topics such as whether God evolves with time or not can be so totally and completely blind to his very plain shortcomings in critical thinking.
(2) Vlad Drkulec has come out on record that exclusionary chess events (events that exclude certain groups) are discriminatory. His criticism of my original post is not only about the terms I use, but also implies that because I even imaged a chess title system that is for certain groups only, I was discriminating. Therefore the CFC, by going along with FIDE and having women-only titles and events, is discriminating.
Point (2) is pretty important, because someone could use it to shut down the CFC by reporting them to whatever federal ministry oversees non-profits. But of course no one will do that, not even the hypocrite Brad Thomson. And most certainly not Neil Frarey, whose posts here display a clear political ambition of taking over the CFC presidency. I'd say good for him, except that he's a Trump supporter which demonstrates clear lack of morals.
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
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