From: Mermaid . (britannica@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Jan 30 2002 - 20:47:25 MST
I am amused. Keep trying.
Mermaid.
From: "L' Ermit" <lhermit@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: virus@lucifer.com
To: virus@lucifer.com
Subject: virus: Constipated Post? - Sniff my Derrida
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 20:36:58 -0600
[Hermit 2] Random snippage mode engaged.
[Hermit 1*] If you are interested, I strongly recommend
[url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684803860/thehermit0d]"The
daughter of Time", Josephine Tey.[/url]
[Mermaid offers]"Truth is the daughter of time"
[Hermit 2] Ditzy as ever, Mermaid did not click the link. If she had she
would have discovered that the book was cited correctly. The title was
indeed sourced from the cliché, which is credited on the title page. As it
is a vindication of Richard III, by a invalided Scotland Yard detective, the
title is appropriate.
===
[Mermaid 1*] How about a new title instead of Agnostic or Atheist? Ignostic?
One who considers religion to be irrelevant. Irrevelant enough to render it
meaningless to define oneself as an atheist. If you dont believe in a diety,
would you define yourself in the same terms as the entity you reject...An
ignostic, on the other hand, doesnt care or give a damn.
[Hermit 2] An agnostic is, as recently demonstrated here, a member of a
sub-category of atheism, unless the agnostic is a believer who asserts that
the nature of his gods is unknowable. As this is very seldom the case, and
the term is very generally misunderstood, I suggest sticking with
"atheism/atheist" which are perfectly good words to convey exactly the
meaning "I don't [i]believe[/i] in gods" and are quite adequate to describe
the result on those incredibly few occasions (other than in atheist forums
perhaps) when it is necessary or useful to explain this. A word that nobody
else uses or understands is not useful unless there is a good reason for
inventing it - and the believers, especially those with a fascination with
diets, would probably not accept it or use it, which would limit its use.
[Hermit 2] Interestingly, while some might think that "Ignoramus" with a
capital "I" might apply to the Mermaid, both "atheist" and "agnostic" are
written with lower case letters unless the normal rules of English require
capitalization (e.g. start of a sentence, in a title). Only believers (and
it seems Mermaid) display their educational deficiencies by invalidly
capitalizing god related words.
====
[Mermaid 1* serves Trivia]:'i dont give a damn' or 'i dont care a damn' has
undisputed Indian origins. During the pre-independence time, the 'dam' was
the coin of the lowest denomination and hence the currency of least value<a
copper coin which was valued at 1/1600th of a rupee>. The Duke of
Wellington, a capable general but a snobbish English<Irish??> man, is
credited with the invention of, "I dont care a two penny dam". Upon his
return to England, he modified it to a form that will be more easily
understood by the native english populace. "I dont give a two penny damn."
[Hermit 2] Mermaid proves herself to be as reliable as ever when making
claims about the South Asian subcontinent and what we should attribute to
it. The Romans already used "Mea nil refert" in 72 BCE ("It makes no
difference to me at all" - with the use of the genitive yielding a very
sneering tone. And by the 1400s the English used "I give not a tinker's dam"
(which is frequently explained as referencing the disposable clay dam used
for collecting solder around repair work), but looking at other
contemporaneous curses, e.g. "a pox on your dam", I suggest that this is
incorrect. The etymology is, I think, "I don't give a tinkers mother" (i.e.
A tinker's mother is worthless). An alternative and plausible etymology
suggests that a tinker's damnation was damn near worthless, but the early
spelling was "dam" at a time when "damn" was already in common use. By the
16th century this had been confabulated with "damnation" to yield "I don't
care a damn" (i.e. I don't care enough about [i]you[/i] to bother damning
you). This was because damning people was a rather popular pastime for the
upper crust as in:
[quote]Heaven grant him now some noble nook,
For, rest his soul! he’d rather be
Genteelly damn’d beside a Duke,
Than sav’d in vulgar company.[/quote]
Thomas Moore (1779–1852), Irish poet. “Epitaph on a Tuft-Hunter.”
[Hermit 2] It was only in the mid 1800s (early 1840s as I recall, but it is
out of period for me and only a vague memory, perhaps from one of the alt
groups) that this transformed to "I don't give a damn" - as in [quote]I
don't give a damn for your loyal service when you think I am right; when I
really want it most is when you think I am wrong.[/quote] General John
Monash, 1865-1931, attr,. in Colin MacInnes, England, Half English, 'Joshua
Reborn'
[Hermit 2] The original is not entirely lost.
[quote]History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want
tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth
a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.[/quote]
Henry Ford (1863–1947), U.S. industrialist. Interview in Chicago Tribune
(1916-05-25).
====
<After "analyzing" and tossing innuendo at Violet Beck>
[Mermaid]DrSebby..I am not sexy. I am just a 18y/o, hymenally challenged,
plain jane frustrated over an iffy relationship with a very busy
daddy...oh...and with the vocabulary of a truck driver. and you can call me
Bubba...:)
[Hermit] Nah. PsychoBitch is much more descriptive
===
Hermit notes that the Blunderov "Heaven and Hell" story is urban legend, and
further wonders if Mermaid obtained the temperature of Heaven & Hell story
from a certain IRC location where she was not quite the favorite channel
slut... and where that had been in a pop-up since 1994 - as in:
[quote]
<TheHermit> The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our
authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the
light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light
of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we
do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much as the Earth does
from the Sun, or 50 times in all.
<TheHermit> The light we receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light
we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that ... The radiation falling on
Heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just
equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much
heat as the Earth by radiation.
<TheHermit> Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50,
where E is the absolute temperature of the earth (-300K), gives H as 798K
(525C). The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed ... [However]
Revelations 21:8 says "But the fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their
part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten
brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point,
444.6C. We have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
[/quote] If so it would have been appropriate to credit it. By the way, the
numbers given in the above version are accurate and the story was doing the
rounds of Oxford in the 1920s - so there is no excuse for getting it wrong.
===
Ben's spam is a harmless urban legend, Mermaid's was not - and should be
reported:
[quote]
If you are contacted, please notify:
U.S. Secret Service
Financial Crimes Division
950 H Street, NW,
Washington, DC 20001
Phone: (202) 406-5850
Fax: (202) 406-5031
E-mail: 419.fcd@usss.treas.gov
[/quote] [url]http://www.scamshield.com/Alert.asp?id=2[/url]
The Feds [b]are[/b] rightly taking this one very seriously.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Sep 25 2002 - 13:28:42 MDT