So a horse-loving, feminist-hating Roosh V fan popped into my Twitter mentions today, defending Roosh against accusations of rape by noting that he’s never actually been charged or convicted of rape. Which is true, though not actually proof of his innocence any more than OJ’s acquittal in criminal court is proof that he didn’t murder his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend.
When Phil pointed out that his belief that Roosh is a rapist seems to be supported by Roosh’s own words, Ms. Smith declared that Roosh’s own words didn’t count, because they appeared in a post of mine. And that’s when, for better or worse, I entered into the discussion myself.
And then I asked the questions I ask everyone who accuses me of taking quotes out of context: Have you read the original quotes in context, and if so, could you tell me how I misrepresented them?
I don’t think anyone I have ever asked these questions to has given me a satisfactory answer. Most slink off at this point, their bluff called.
But others continue to bluff and bluster onward, doing their best to avoid answering the questions — either because they have read the quotes in their original context, and know full well that I didn’t misrepresent them, or because they haven’t read the quotes in the original and don’t want to admit it.
Still, I don’t think I’ve ever run across a bluffer quite as brazen or as persistent as Ms. Smith, who somehow managed, over the course of several hours of on-and-off “debate,” to avoid saying whether or not she actually read any of the books she claimed I was misrepresenting. Or even the post of mine she was ostensibly critiquing.
As the hours went by, her attempts to wriggle out of answering these rather basic yes or no questions took on a kind of Dadaesque grandeur. Read on, if you have the patience for it.
Seeing the name “Mina” so often in my mentions made me think of the Bollywood classic “Eena Meena Deeka,” which is certainly more entertaining than Mina Smith’s “arguments” above.
I’ve heard another doomsday scenario in the expanding universe paradigm is eventually the space between electrons and protons expands enough that the fundamental properties of matter start to shift, or matter itself becomes unstable and everything collapses into dust as the electrons spiral away from the nuclei of every atom simultaneously.
[blockquote]And of course, with so many universes there’s probably one where the tuning worked out so Pandapool and Broken Butterfly can have their dragons.[/blockquote]
Yesssssssssssssssssssssssssss.
[blockquote]Just pretend that people you know are Australian rather than American and you might find it easier. I find people asking about praying for me or my family incredibly intrusive. It comes across – at least to Australians who are uncomfortable with the rather emotional and overly personal, uber-religious US style of doing things – as a demand to concede or to consider the validity of prayer and religion generally. Australia is not a religious place.[/blockquote]
Alas, as I am terrified of people and a shut in, I admit I know very little about others in detail. This is one of those things I didn’t know, so I’ll be sure to keep this in mind! Thank you~.
And it is clear I have no idea how formatting works. Whee!
@Broken Butterfly
Try these instead of these [ ].
@Broken Butterfly
Hmm. That didn’t work. Try the “sideways V” (on the comma key and the period key) instead of the square brackets.
@Binjabreel:
That’s true. That may well happen. The universe may well end up with every particle travelling away from every other particle so quickly that no information can be exchanged. This is the final stage of the Big Rip scenario.
Basically, it comes down to dark energy, and specifically how it’s distributed throughout the universe. This is a problem because as mentioned, we can’t see it to study it. As such a lot of our theories borrow from the particle physicists.
The current Standard Model of cosmology says that the force from dark energy is constant, meaning that the universe’s acceleration is constant; which means that it would never become strong enough to cause a Big Rip. Some other models, such as Phantom Energy or Kinetic Quintessence, argue that dark energy’s outward push would become stronger as the universe expands, meaning that our acceleration is accelerating. If that’s true then it may be strong enough to cause a Big Rip.
If the Standard Model is right and a Big Rip doesn’t happen then the galaxies will just recede from one another, and the only stars in the sky will be those near us.
Weirdly, some of those who once believed in a cyclic universe (that is, big bang -> big crunch -> big bang) are now saying that a big rip could also result in a cyclic universe, and so are supporting theories other than the Standard Model. It might be that they really want a cyclic universe, or it might just be that the alternative – the Old Universe, in which all the fuel burns out and entropy claims us all – is just really bleak.
@Falconer:
I appreciate that you may not want to live on Krikkit. I don’t either, mostly because they don’t understand the game of cricket there and I like cricket. Sadly cosmology is not a democracy: we don’t get to choose our cosmos, just discover which one we’re in.
The good news is that we live in one of those universes which is not instantly fatal to all life. That’s a bit of a relief, especially when you look at the number of possibilities.
@EJ
Fascinating. Too bad black holes aren’t as mystical as they seem, but it still boggles my mind that we are, in fact, drifting farther apart, it seems to defy logic. I do hope there comes a day when we discover what dark matter or dark energy consists of or what their properties are. An energy that counteracts gravity seems like no easy feat.
@ Moocow
A fridge magnet can overcome the entire gravity of the Earth.
[There’s probably a “Gravity, do you even lift Bro?” comment to be had here somehow]