[jimmy carter] you really should be accurate, you know

I haven’t seen a lot of this in the blogosphere but that’s maybe because I haven’t looked widely enough. The thing is, Jimmy Carter does not come out of this smelling of roses.

Kenneth W. Stein, who was the center's first executive director, told a Los Angeles audience Thursday that his concerns grew out of what he called Carter's "gross inventions, intentional falsehoods and irresponsible remarks." That’s not mincing words.

He said that the two most serious errors were when Carter misrepresented the wording of a key U.N. resolution and gave a false account of a 1990 meeting he held with former Syrian President Hafez Assad, which Stein attended.

The conclusion which can be drawn is that Carter doesn’t like the hardline Jewish negotiating manner. How much can be read into his Southern Baptist background and how much is personal antipathy is still not clear. Also, does it matter? The man is getting on in years and it’s only a book, after all.

Yes, only a book but one which can be seized on by one particular side to fuel the conflict. Carter is not exactly Joe Bloggs from Idaho, the illiterate street sweeper. People will take his words as carrying authority.

More on this after adequate research.

[lexicon] third ten handy shakespearean taunts

The first ten can be found here.
The second ten can be found here.

The third set of barbed taunts to hurl at the unworthy can be found below. Which are the best?

1] Most shallow man! Thou’re worms-meat in respect of a good piece of flesh indeed! [As You Like It ]
2] Away, you bottle-ale rascal, you filthy bung, away! Taken from: Henry IV, part 2
3] Thy lips rot off! Taken from: Timon of Athens
4] Canst thou believe thy living is a life, so stinkingly depending? Go mend, go mend. Taken from: Measure for Measure
5] Peace, ye fat guts! Taken from: Henry IV, part I
6] Hence rotten thing! Or I shall shake thy bones out of thy garments. Taken from: Coriolanus
7] [Thou] small grey coated gnat. Taken from: Romeo and Juliet
8] Thou crusty botch of nature! Taken from: Troilus and Cressida
9] Thou art only mark'd for hot vengeance and the rod of heaven. Taken from: Henry IV, part I
10] You starvelling, you eel-skin, you dried neat's-tongue, you bull's-pizzle, you stock-fish - O for breath to utter what is like thee! - you tailor's-yard, you sheath, you bow-case, you vile standing tuck! Taken from: Henry IV, part 1

[george bush] misunderstood and maligned [4]

Well, Laura’s never complained, let’s put it that way.

The idea is to vote for the best three from each ten [50 overall] and then we’ll find a grand winning quote.

Click for Part 1, Part 2 or Part 3.

31] "They misunderestimated me." - Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 6, 2000

32] "They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's some kind of federal program." - St. Charles, Mo., Nov. 2, 2000

33] "Actually, I...this may sound a little West Texan to you, but I like it. When I'm talking about...when I'm talking about myself, and when he's talking about myself, all of us are talking about me." - On the coming Social Security crisis; Wilton, Conn.; June 9, 2000

34] "I think we agree, the past is over." - On his meeting with John McCain, Dallas Morning News, May 10, 2000

35] "It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it." - Reuters, May 5, 2000

36] Gov. Bush: "Because the picture on the newspaper. It just seems so un-American to me, the picture of the guy storming the house with a scared little boy there. I talked to my little brother, Jeb...I haven't told this to many people. But he's the governor of...I shouldn't call him my little brother...my brother, Jeb, the great governor of Texas." Jim Lehrer: "Florida." Gov. Bush: "Florida. The state of the Florida." - The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, April 27, 2000

37] "I was raised in the West. The west of Texas. It's pretty close to California. In more ways than Washington, D.C., is close to California." - In Los Angeles as quoted by the Los Angeles Times, April 8, 2000

38] "It is not Reaganesque to support a tax plan that is Clinton in nature." - Los Angeles, Feb. 23, 2000

39] "I understand small business growth. I was one." - New York Daily News, Feb. 19, 2000

40] "The senator has got to understand if he's going to have...he can't have it both ways. He can't take the high horse and then claim the low road." - To reporters in Florence, S.C., Feb. 17, 2000

[the eu and scotland] what thinkest thou

David Farrer said:

What it apparently boils down to is this: If Scotland decides to be independent, would what's left of the existing entity be deemed to be the continuing UK? I think that this is one of those "not-proven" situations …

To which, the ubiquitous dearieme said:

Without the Scottish seats for Labour, an English Tory government might just seize the chance to declare that Scotland is the successor nation and that England has thereby left the EU.

To which the anti-separatist, james higham, said:

Doesn't Scotland realize and doesn't England realize that separately, neither has anywhere near the clout which the Union had before. Margaret was the head of Britain, not a fragment of it. The EU are going to brush Scotland aside and gobble up England. This was always the plan and they played on Scottish Nationalism to get there. A house divided, didn't someone say?

To which you say?

[philosophy] in the end, who’s to say [1]

There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is half of them are true. [Winston Churchill]

In any philosophical discussion, there has to at least be agreement on the terms of reference, on the terms used themselves, of the parameters of the field in which you agree to argue and in a psychological predisposition to accept points made by the other side. Even more than this is the uselessness of placing oneself in the centre, the Me stance and demanding that you convince Me. Who am “I”?

This presupposes that You are sufficiently equipped, mentally and by dint of vast knowledge, to ultimately comprehend the Truth. I make no such claim, as I am no humanist, placing Man at the centre, with the sun, stars and the elements orbiting around Me. Rather, I am a speck in the firmament and yet, as the Australian aborigines believe, acting on and affecting all other elements of the earth and sky.

But evidence is not enough. Depends how it’s served up. Knowledge about dinosaurs is derived from a variety of fossil and non-fossil records and has the backing of the scientific community. So what do you make of this fossil record? If you’re half willing to accept this, the moment I place it in its original context, it will be rejected because of the guff written around it . Yet how does the guff alter the record itself?

Put the Nephilim in a biblical context or in an apocryphal and they’ll be rejected immediately. Start rabbiting on about Annunaki and you'd be consigned to the funny farm. Which leaves the eternal question: “Have they been finally disproved just because kooks are into them?” There’s at least circumstantial that they did exist.

And finally – if your reaction is to smile and say: "Of course it’s rubbish," my question to you is – on what are you basing that view? Archeology, philosophy or your own psychology? And if you say: "Evidence, man. With the dinosaurs there was evidence," I ask: "And what of the fossil record link here?"Then I ask a second question: "Why are you so quick to accept archeological evidence of one and so determined to reject the other?"

[brain drain] surfeit of philosophers

In case you missed it by some ill fortune, get thee over forthwith to the peerless Tiberius Gracchus, from Westminster and have your clicking finger ready.

You’re about to have a feast of philosophers. Never mind the mealy-mouthed Philistine le Higham’s less than gracious remarks in the comments section. This is one of the best collections you’re ever likely to have in one place at one time. Now, my contribution, alas unoriginal, is:

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable;

Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table;

David Hume could out-consume Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

And Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.

There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya 'bout the raising of the wrist;

Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, on half a pint of shandy was particularly ill;

Plato, they say, could stick it away - half a crate of whisky every day;

Aristotle, Aristotle, was a bugger for the bottle; Hobbes was fond of his dram

And René Descartes was a drunken fart: 'I drink, therefore I am.'

Yet, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed - a lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.