Numpties – Page 9 – Wis[s]e Words

Bullying is the new freedom of speech

Published on November 18, 2009

Harry’s Place attempts to prove Laurie Penny’s accusation of bullying wrong, by erm trying to bully her into withdrawing the accusation. For such macho culture warriors they have remarkably thin skins. It’s a trait they share with their ideological compatriots over here, as with the backlash against Geert Wilders finally starting, he has shown to be better at dishing it out than taking it as well.

The pattern until recently had been that he would say something incredibly insulting and/or racist (comparing Islamic headscarves to “dishrags” for example), would get widely if ineffectively condemned for it, which he in turn would use to show the political elite in Den Haag didn’t get it. But when in short succesion a government report called the PVV “an extreme rightwing party” and anti-democratic and a popular standup comedian compared it to the WWI Dutch nazi party, Wilders’ fondness for freedom of speech evaporated. While he called these accusations absurd and insane, his followers took more drastic actions and sent various death threats to Wilders’ more vocal critics…

Righwing blowhards can only win the debate when the opposition rolls over. When they themselves are attacked their true, bullying nature appears.

Fake FC Groningen hooligans take their role too seriously, stone police

Published on November 11, 20091 Comment

In April of last year there was a fire at the FC Groningen stadion, after an ill advised p.r. stunt went out of hand. All sorts of safety measures turned out not to work, though fortunately nobody died. To prevent a similar incident, the club held a major exercise yesterday, together with fire services, police and several hundred fans playing the role of hooligans. The idea was to simulate a riot in which a fire broke out and then to evacuate the stadion. Several fans however went slightly too far in their role and started throwing rocks, rather than tennis balls, at the police…

Steve Fuller – what an asshole

Published on November 9, 2009

I believe that Levitt’s ultimate claim to fame may rest on his having been as a pioneer of cyber-fascism, whereby a certain well-educated but (for whatever reason) academically disenfranchised group of people have managed to create their own parallel universe of what is right and wrong in matters of science, which is backed up (at least at the moment) by nothing more than a steady stream of invective. Their resentment demands a scapegoat –and ‘postmodernists’ function as Jews had previously.

From Steve Fuller’s obituary of Norman Levitt in which he accuses him of wanting postmodernists like Fuller to be sent in unheated cattlecars to a death camp in Poland, gassed and the gold fillings pried out of their mouths before their corpses are burned in the gas ovens. Fuller would of course never put it like this, as that would show not just how grossly offensive, but also how absurd this comparison is. But that is what he’s implying, and for no better reason that that Levitt said nasty things about his work. Words have meanings, though it’s no great surprise that an intelligent design defender and socalled “postmodernist” like Fuller doesn’t understand that

Oh A. N. Wilson No!

Published on November 5, 2009

Driven Nutts by the debate on the sacking of the government’s drugs policy advisor, A. N. Wilson comes out with this gem on his way to an argument by Hitler:

The trouble with a ‘scientific’ argument, of course, is that it is not made in the real world, but in a laboratory by an unimaginative academic relying solely on empirical facts.

Facts! As Richard Herring once said, “you can prove anything with facts”. No wonder A. N. Wilson is disdainful of them, of those scientists in their “university common rooms” and behind their “Hampstead dining tables “. They don’t have common sense, like A. N. Wilson has, the common sense that tells him scientists were wrong to trust the MRR vaccine, know global warming is real or believe in evolution. Scientists are arrogant and the new Catholic Inquisition because they beleive in research and facts and cannot bear to have anybody contradict them! Yeah!

Oh dear. And I quite enjoyed the Victorians and After the Victorians too. But what a great example of how crackpot ideas attract each other: global warming, MRR, evolution doubts — it’s like playing crackpot bingo.

UPDATE: I forgot that he also came out in favour of eugenics — sterilising the poor and feckless.

Someone has a high opinion of himself

Published on November 4, 2009

In a desparate bid to show that it’s not just “literary” writers like Margaret Atwood who can have a rod up their ass about writing genre novels, here’s Terry Goodkind:

First of all, I don’t write fantasy. I write stories that have important human themes. They have elements of romance, history, adventure, mystery and philosophy. Most fantasy is one-dimensional. It’s either about magic or a world-building. I don’t do either.

He is right that he doesn’t write fantasy: he writes extrued fantasy product only distinguishable from all other efp series by an obsession with S&M and objectivism. Twat.