In this thread we post short things that don’t require a seperate thread.
Previous low content threads:
April 2011
March 2011
Januari 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
This post is uninformative and made only to make sure my post count wasn’t 666 during finals week. 
can’t get much more low content than that. BACK TO THE BOOKS!
–Edit–
Well, I don’t want this to be a total thrown away post. So here is a poem I was thinking about earlier by William Stafford.
A Story That Could Be True:
If you were exchanged in the cradle and
your real mother died
without ever telling the story
then no one knows your name,
and somewhere in the world
your father is lost and needs you
but you are far away.
He can never find
how true you are, how ready.
when the great wind comes
and the robberies of the rain
you stand in some corner shivering.
The people who go by-
you wonder at their calm.
They miss the whisper that runs
any day in your mind,
“Who are you really wanderer?”-
and the answer you have to give
no matter how dark and cold
the world around you is:
“Maybe I’m a king.”
Awesome!
A cool post I made on another forum, which ladyphoenix made me join: http://www.onlinedebate.net/forums/showthread.php/23145-The-Rise-of-German-Fascism?p=465708&viewfull=1#post465708
Edit: I was just looking up Free Lunch on wikipedia, and it says that saloons used to include a free lunch with the purchase of a drink to build customers. Well, the temperance movement had a problem with that. They thought it made people drink, and tried to get it banned. Just reminded me that the Progressive desire to control what we eat has a long history.
Filled this out for my recent history class survey:
"The book literally lies. The book claims Hoover was “pro free market” and “unwilling to run deficits”. What a joke. Hoover ran UNPRECEDENTED deficits, establishing the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, enacting the Home Loan Bank discount system, extending government aid to land-banks, bailing out state governments, etc. FDR himself conceded that the New Deal was just an extension of Hoover policies which is ironic because FDR campaigned against the runaway spending of Hoover, pledging austerity .
So the book is objectively wrong. This is just mindless regurgitation of popular statist mythology so that all the little kiddies can rationalize the next corporate bailout or foreign war.
Good job being a shill!"
Thank you, Sieben.
Normally, I would say, “You could have been more polite and less hyperbolic”, but the facts you detailed are sufficient enough to make up for the rhetoric.
Yeah…
This is an attitude “problem” I’ve been having. I totally have patience for people who are legitimately interested or intellectually honest. But the second I get one whiff of bull, I call them on it. Bluntly and unequivocally. On forums I never ever let anyone get away with their mistakes. Even if they drop them I just carry it on to the next post. It is totally sadistic and I want them to be as uncomfortable as possible for the crime of spitting their crap at me in the first place.
There are two results. It can spiral into heated disrespectful discussion where my opponent will not budge an inch, and therefore gets owned over and over again on the same issues they were originally wrong about. As far as I can see, experiencing repeat failure is humiliating and they eventually stop. They also sometimes just walk away. The more “mature” users do this - but they usually wait till they’re in a real bind to exit.
When told that I’m being “uncivil” or “immature” I fire back that intellectual dishonesty is far more uncivil, and that maturity is a social shield they hide behind because they have no real substance.
So inb4 “you won’t convert many people this way”. I’m not trying to. Calling liars liars and hacks hacks is catharthic. If I’m going to bang my head against the wall trying to explain that the state is not a voluntary club, I may as well let the people know along the way that there’s something wrong with them after a few pages. Politely restating arguments is just avoiding the real issue - people are utter and complete failures.
On the plus side, the people I fight with are usually the especially obnoxious members of the forum. Observers frequently chip in that they’re on my side, not on theirs.
I just wanted to say how glad i am that mises.org is like the only site not blocked at my job!
Good. The world need fiery screaming anarchists now, even if they’re a little over the line.
The problem is that a lot of these terms have been misused to the point where they are simply interpreted as undefined slurs. So even if you refer to them in their actual, academic meaning, people will just hear “angry rant”.
I noticed this, for example, with the term “myth”. A myth is defined as “an unproved collective belief that is accepted uncritically”, but people more or less throw it around to denigrate anything they don’t believe in, even if it is neither unproved nor accepted by very many people nor are they uncritical about it. The word has lost it’s meaning, so when I call something a myth, actually meaning “an unproved collective belief that is accepted uncritically”, the listeners will simply think I’m throwing around undefined slurs to denigrate something I happen to not believe in. This kind of newspeak is very much the friend of authoritarianism, because liberal content relies on clearly defined words.
Marc Stevens’ latest.
I would not describe myself as screaming. My tone comes across more as condescending and accusatory. As soon as I figure out that people are intentionally wasting my time with self-validating BS, I start telling them. I’ve had people say “I don’t know anything about math, but I still know your math is wrong”. They have the nerve to continue sitting there and regurgitating a shield of incoherant words.
Well.. I always make sure that my opponent is lieing before I accuse them of it. You’re right that sometimes that’s what they “hear” or accuse me of. But it is easily deflected. It goes something like this:
A: You’re totally incompetent mathematically
B: Well that is insulting you need to mature mister
A: No. You are sitting here tell me I am wrong, giving me no reasons, and admitting you don’t even understand what I’m saying. You’re a hack.
B: No response
I don’t think I convert these people. But they get a lot less aggressive around me and it gives them something to think about. And again, spectators usually agree with me
Hey, the Republicans have Bill O Reilly, look how popular he is. Then again, Bill is an imbecile, and judging by your debates, you know what your talking about.
1984ing the public schools, school surveillence. Creepy.
http://motherjones.com/media/2011/05/annette-fuentes-lockdown-high
Ron Paul the voluntaryist?
I got goosebumps at 00:13. Brb gonna make a thread for that video.
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/05/house_passes_bill_to_force_off.html
The Obama Administration is being “forced” by Congress to sell off leases in the Gulf. Of course, we know that government leases on land being used for mining or limber or oil are a bad idea because of a lack of well-defined property rights and lack of liability, but this caused oil to fall below $100 a barrel.
This could blow the CPI out of the water along with MIT’s Billion Prices Project, which according to Zerohedge just came back online.
Medley of Jung and current situation: