RD.net to be re-revamped!

[lordpasternack]

But are her fellatio skills up to par? If so, it's all good.

I bet mine are better. I'd be willing to have a fair blow-off - on any willing man/men.

Do you think that might be the ideal way to convince Richard of his folly? That, not only is she a wolf in sheep's clothing, but she's not even the most adept woman at fellatio in the atheist community?

[lordpasternack]

Plus - Historical reference: http://rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... 82#p368317



Edit - fixed link.

[Svartalf]

Uni's here in Oz are now degree factories. The only thing that gets decent funding is biochem and nanotechnology. UQ was gutted of its traditional departments multiple times. Everything else is being turned into "Centres" where you have to source your own funding. It's a farce.

Well, I suppose on that note, one should at least congratulate R Elisabeth Cornwell for "sourcing her funding" wisely... even if she demonstrates her fundamental lack of respect for her sugar daddy by lying her face off to him, bragging to the in-crowd about what favours he's been doing her, and stabbing a handful of people in the back who might have appeared to be taking some limelight away from her...

But are her fellatio skills up to par? If so, it's all good.

I bet mine are better. I'd be willing to have a fair blow-off - on any willing man/men.

Do you think that might be the ideal way to convince Richard of his folly? That, not only is she a wolf in sheep's clothing, but she's not even the most adept woman at fellatio in the atheist community?

I'd love to have a demonstration, not that I intend to ever compare with cornwell's... but it looks like you're more likely to use your weapons to convince tricky dick of the error of his ways. :

[lordpasternack]

I'd love to have a demonstration, not that I intend to ever compare with cornwell's... but it looks like you're more likely to use your weapons to convince tricky dick of the error of his ways. :

Geography, attraction and possible other factors permitting - I have no qualms with giving demonstrations.

As to your other point... well, I wish I could agree with you, on some level - but the truth is it's a bit past that, at the time of going to press...

We may talk diplomacy after the boil has been lanced, and hopefully drained...

[DaveDodo007]

FFS, I go away for the weekend only to find that I missed all the blowjobs, I swear if I fell into a barrel of tits I would come out sucking my thumb.

Apart from the BJ's Have I missed any important developments.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Apart from the BJ's Have I missed any important developments.

Nah. It's blowjobs all the way down.

[pErvinalia]

Uni's here in Oz are now degree factories. The only thing that gets decent funding is biochem and nanotechnology. UQ was gutted of its traditional departments multiple times. Everything else is being turned into "Centres" where you have to source your own funding. It's a farce.

Well, I suppose on that note, one should at least congratulate R Elisabeth Cornwell for "sourcing her funding" wisely... even if she demonstrates her fundamental lack of respect for her sugar daddy by lying her face off to him, bragging to the in-crowd about what favours he's been doing her, and stabbing a handful of people in the back who might have appeared to be taking some limelight away from her...

But are her fellatio skills up to par? If so, it's all good.

I bet mine are better. I'd be willing to have a fair blow-off - on any willing man/men.

Do you think that might be the ideal way to convince Richard of his folly? That, not only is she a wolf in sheep's clothing, but she's not even the most adept woman at fellatio in the atheist community?

This thread just got a whole lot better!

[Coito ergo sum]

FFS, ..... I swear if I fell into a barrel of tits I would come out sucking my thumb.

I'm stealing that one.

[lordpasternack]

Hi Dave - here are couple of the weekend's highlights - which are entirely serious and carry no significant risk of spontaneous tumescence:

I've said I will document my correspondence with Robin Elisabeth Cornwell, and I will. But there are a lot of small details to document therein, and personal analysis and context I'd like to add when I do. And I'd also like to try to document it in as good a way as I can, as to impart close to the full weight of the integrity of the evidence, which remains sitting in my email inbox. So it will be a fairly time-consuming and focused task, which I'll do when I'm freer - most likely later this month.

But in the meantime, I'd like to document just one particular incidence of behaviour typical of her - to give you a taste of what's to come...

[ post continues here... ]

And this:

Also - as for hearing one side of the story - don't underestimate Cornwell's talent for backtracking.

This is from RDFRS's original Complaint (para 29, page 7):

29. By early Summer, 2010, the legal impediments that had prevented RDFRS from

operating The Store itself were eliminated and the Executive Director and Trustees decided to

transfer The Store’s operations from UBP to RDFRS. In connection with this decision, RDFRS had a

number of meetings with Timonen and Norton and requested access to the financial books and

records of UBP. Norton and Timonen complied with this request, at least in part, and delivered

QuickBooks files for UBP to Dr. Cornwell in or about June 2010.

[ post continues here... ]

[DaveDodo007]

Hi Dave - here are couple of the weekend's highlights - which are entirely serious and carry no significant risk of spontaneous tumescence:

I've said I will document my correspondence with Robin Elisabeth Cornwell, and I will. But there are a lot of small details to document therein, and personal analysis and context I'd like to add when I do. And I'd also like to try to document it in as good a way as I can, as to impart close to the full weight of the integrity of the evidence, which remains sitting in my email inbox. So it will be a fairly time-consuming and focused task, which I'll do when I'm freer - most likely later this month.

But in the meantime, I'd like to document just one particular incidence of behaviour typical of her - to give you a taste of what's to come...

[ post continues here... ]

And this:

Also - as for hearing one side of the story - don't underestimate Cornwell's talent for backtracking.

This is from RDFRS's original Complaint (para 29, page 7):

29. By early Summer, 2010, the legal impediments that had prevented RDFRS from

operating The Store itself were eliminated and the Executive Director and Trustees decided to

transfer The Store’s operations from UBP to RDFRS. In connection with this decision, RDFRS had a

number of meetings with Timonen and Norton and requested access to the financial books and

records of UBP. Norton and Timonen complied with this request, at least in part, and delivered

QuickBooks files for UBP to Dr. Cornwell in or about June 2010.

[ post continues here... ]

Thanks.

[lordpasternack]

Also - you may wish to note for future reference, the two options indicated by the red arrows, for clicking to view the latest post in a thread that you haven't yet read:

firstunread.png (20.46 KiB) Viewed 2502 times

[Calilasseia]

With respect to this piece of joy from the Dawkins Sues Timonen 2 thread ...

I can't help but feel a bit of schadenfreude about the fact that RDFRS is being thoroughly spitroasted right now by genuine threats to their charitable status which they have entirely landed themselves in. Especially given their grossly misplaced priorities about threats to said status. I want to see the coup de grace, to be honest. Maybe Richard might just learn something - although he's been completely unaltered by several bitter learning experiences already.

I made a comparison previously in this thread between Dawkins and Franz von Papen, and my discovery of this merely makes that comparison more apposite, at least with respect to the matters of complacency and incompetence. For those unfamiliar with this individual, a few extracts from Airey Neave's Nuremberg will serve to illustrate the reasons I make the comparison on these grounds (though until evidence is forthcoming, I'll eschew adding mendacity to the list of coupled attributes). Bear with me for the length of this exposition, but the reasons will become apparent in due course. For example, on p. 148, we have:

I felt a genuine sense of amusement at meeting him, since Franz von Papen was best known to me as a man who had frequent trouble with confidential documents. To many of the public he was known for little else. He was thought to be a dilettante, a joke figure in politics. The older generation remembered him for his incompetence as a spy-master in the United States during the First World War.

Von Papen, an officer in a feudal cavalry regiment, was German Military Attaché in Washington until he was declared persona non grata in December 1915. His efforts at sabotage were amateurish in the extreme. He gave 500 dollars to an agent named Werner Horn to blow up Vanceborough Bridge in Canada but the man was arrested on the border.

On pages 149 & 150, we have:

Unreliable though his memoirs may be, they describe his worst gaffe in the United States, which also involved Dr Heinrich Albert, Financial Advisor to the German Embassy in Washington. Albert was using funds collected for the German Red Cross to help finance von Papen's interest in the Bridgeport Projectile Company [a dummy company erected to tie up American arms manufacturers with fake orders, to stop the British from purchasing munitions]. According to one story, Albert fell asleep in a train in New York with a briefcase full of plans and letters involving von Papen. When he left the train at 50th Street, he forgot the briefcase. Suddenly remembering, he rushed back only to see a man racing off with it in a taxi.

Von Papen says it was 'stolen from under his arm'. He wrote in his memoirs:

I was having dinner at the German Club with two or three friends that evening, when Albert, in a state of terrible agitation, suddenly appeared and told us what happened. We did everything in our power to locate the briefcase but without success.

Three days later, the New York World carried on its front pages facsimilies of von Papen's secret efforts to prevent the American arms industry from aiding the Allies. They continued for a week.

"The sensation", wrote von Papen in 1952, "was tremedous".

This self-satisfied comments was characteristic. Von Papen later defended himself and Albert against charges of negligence. My wartime secret service colleagues would have called the incident 'an imperial balls-up'. Not so von Papen. He survived one fantastic bloomer after another.

A few weeks later, von Papen wrote a letter to his wife in Germany. This he gave to an American journalist named Archibald who was on his way to Berlin. Archibald was considered reliable and he carried with him other papers including a report from von Papen to the German War Ministry on the loss of the Albert papers. As might be expected, the British Secret Service knew all about Archibald through their Naval Attaché in Washington. When he arrived in the Dutch liner Rotterdam at Falmouth, all the papers were seized. They were published by the British Government as a White Paper and in newspapers in the United States. Von Papen's letter to his wife must have helped the Allies with neutral American opinion.

He wrote to her:

They stole unluckily from the good Albert in the Elevated ... How splendid on the Eastern Front! I always say to these idiotic Yankees that they should shut their mouths or better still express their admirations for all that heroism.

In his memoirs von Papen called the phrase 'idiotic Yankees' a 'slightly unparliamentary expression'.

Immediately following the above, on paves 150 & 151, we have:

By December 1915 the American administration could stand him no more and declared him persona non grata. He returned to Germany on the SS Nordam, which, after a stormy crossing, put in at Falmouth. A guard was placed on his cabin door and the British Secret Service searched his luggage. That von Papen was surprised at this after the Archibald incident, provides a clue to his complacent personality.

Undismayed by his expulsion by the American administration, von Papen travelled from New York with the most embarrassing secret documents imaginable. The British discovered cheque stubs showing the amounts paid to his agents, including Werner Horn, who had attempted to blow up Vanceborough Bridge. Another payment was made to one Hoegen, marked 'Dum dum inquiry'. It can be imagined what Allied propagandists were able to do with this information.

A little further on, after the discussion of the "Black Tom" case on page 151 (read more about this incident here), we have this (pages 151 & 152):

Ludicrous though he was, von Papen survived to commit even more indiscretions. He was summoned from the trenches in 1917, to join the staff of General von Falkenhayn in the Middle East, where he seems to have had considerable influence and to have seen some fighting. in August 1918 he was at Ludendorff's headquarters in France reporting on the collapse of the Turkish Campaign in Palestine. While he was on leave in Germany, British cavalry over-ran the German headquarters in Nazareth and opened a trunkful of papers which von Papen had left there.

Among his associates in America was the equally incompetent naval intelligence officer Captain von Rintelen, author of The Dark Invader. Rintelen was sent by the German Navy in 1915 to organise strikes amongst American longshoremen and the placing of bombs in ships. If von Papen was careless, von Rintelen seems to have been slightly cracked. According to von Papen, he [von Rintelen] walked into his office in New York demanding an interview with President Wilson, a strange beginning to a secret sabotage mission. Fearing perhaps that von Rintelen would be an even greater disaster for Germany than his Military Attaché, the long-suffering German Ambassador had him sent home at von Papen's request. Von Rintelen was captured in the Channel by the British in July 1915 and sent back to the United States, where he was sentenced to imprisonment in Atlanta.

Von Rintelen's fury against von Papen knew no bounds. in The Dark Invader he described him as a 'foolish and stupid intriguer'. A more serious accusation was that his capacity for losing secret documents on plans for rebellion in Ireland and India, and sabotage in the United States, led to the imprisonment or execution of German agents.

He was composed and urbane when I announced the indictment [von Papen was one of the principal defendants at Nuremberg, alongside Goering et al]. His silver hair was smartly brushed. He wore his blue pinstripe suit like a good member of the Herren-Club in Berlin.

He spoke English in a honeyed voice of the best Old Etonian blend. It was easy to imagine with what lordly indifference he had brushed off his blunders in the First World War. He must have lived in a magic circle. Even after his vanity and ignorance had damaged Germany in the eyes of the world, he was still received by the Kaiser to give his views on submarine warfare. Unfortunately, he was 'hardly allowed to get a word in' [comment from von Papen's memoirs].

He looked elegant in the squalid cell. I was surprised by his self-possession. He was no physical coward. He had commanded an infantry battalion in France in 1916 and 1917. According to his own account, he was frequently asked for his advice by Hindeburg and Ludendorff on the conduct of trench warfare. From an early age he had no doubts about his own importance. The statement which he made to me that afternoon was exquisite.

"I cannot understand why I find myself in this position, Herr Major".

"Why not read the indictment and you will see."

On pages 153 & 154, referring to the events leading up to Hitler becoming Chancellor, we have this:

In 1932, there were many who believed, as they do today, that the parliamentary system had failed. They saw in von Papen a suitable front man for a right-wing authoritarian régime. They thought of him as a man who would restore the ruling class to which he belonged and to which he referred, fantastically, as 'the upper stratum authorised by history'. German farmers and landowners had high hopes of this anachronsitic figure who had experience neither of administration nor leadership.

The French Ambassador summed him up:

"The appointment was at first greeted with incredulous astonishment; when the news was confirmed, everyone smiled. There is something about Papen that prevents either his friends or his enemies from taking him seriously; he bears the stamp of frivolity; he is not a personality of the first rank. He is one of those people who are considered capable of plunging into a dangerous adventure; they pick up every gauntlet, accept every wager. If he succeeds in an enterprise he is very pleased; if he fails it doesn't bother him."

Von Papen's Chancellorship proved the most 'dangerous adventure' of all. It lasted from May 31st, 1932 until his coalition government ws defeated in the Reichstag on September 12th, 1932 on a vote of censure, though he continued to 'govern' until the elections of November 6th. He had virtually destroyed parliamentary democracy by reactionary decrees aimed at creating 'a new state between democracy and totalitarian dictatorship'. It made no sense, but it paved the way for Hitler.

For a time, von Papen enjoyed the confidence of the aged President von Hindenburg. Of them it was said: "Both had in common, in spite of the great age difference, the fact that they had failed to recognise that times had changed".

Hindenburg's devious confidant, General Kurt von Schleicher, kept von Papen in power till his resignation on November 17th. It is said that when people protested that von Papen had no head for administration, von Schleicher replied "he doesn't need a head, his job is to be a hat".

Later on, we have this:

As soon as the old President had handed him a resignation phtograph inscribed 'I had a comrade', von Papen entered into a pact with the devil. He allied himself to Hitler. Already his vision of the future was totalitarian and militarist. He was no doubt arrogant and blind by nature, but he believed himself to be part of a common movement with Hitler and the massed Nazis. In January 1933, when Hitler became Chancellor, von Papen again took office as Vice-Chancellor. That month he was seeking to soothe anxious voices.

"What are you worried about? I have Hindenburg's confidence. In two months we shall have Hitler squeezed into a corner so that he squeaks".

Hitler bided his time.

"We have hired him for ourselves", said the frivolous von Papen, to his friends.

Hitler also spoke of his conservative colleagues. "These men are ghosts", he sneered.

I could add to the length of this post considerably with more exceprts to build my case, but doing so would risk boredom on the part of many here, so I shall content myself with the above. The case I am making is that RD shares with the late and not very much lamented von Papen, several key features. One, an upper class background, and the privileges arising therefrom. Two, thanks to that background, and RD's years of tenure as an Oxford don, he shares with von Papen a combination of patrician hubris with regard to world affairs, and a truly enormous blind spot with respect to what someone from an aristocratic background would doubtless refer to as the 'lower orders', despite being politically on an entirely different part of the spectrum from von Papen. Three, as a consequence of the influence of the dreaming spires, and his relatively easy induction into elevated social circles, within which such matters as contracts are regarded as a vulgarity only lesser people need, he conducts his affairs as if he is dealing with such people, even when he is dealing with people far removed from those elevated circles, and harbours a woefully complacent view of universal human decency that in some cases, is manifestly not supported by the evidence. I suspect that he even extends, entirely unwisely, a degree of charitable benevolence of contemplation to one or two of his more duplicitous enemies, a favour that they most certainly would not return given the chance.

One poster here, in one of the now-dusty threads on the subject, suggested that the forum débacle from which we all fled arises from snobbery on his part - namely, he jettisoned the forum because he didn't like what some of the proles got up to in the social sections of the forum, and what he saw there offended his exquisitely cultivated aesthetics on the matter. It's safe to say that this arises from the same causes I've outlined above, and that the coupling of a woeful other-worldliness with respect to the political dimension, to the sort of 'magic circle' perspective arising from those dreaming spires, leads inexorably to a preference for ideas over people.

Of course, due diligence with respect to ideas has been of great value with respect to his written works, without which they would not have ascended to the heights that they have. But he runs the risk of becoming increasingly divorced from the audience for those works through his actions and his attitudes, and it's a pity Carl Sagan isn't around to point him in a different direction in this vein. Perhaps we should have a word with Neil deGrasse Tyson, and see if he can't wield some beneficial influence here.

And yes, I'm well aware of the cosmic irony of me of all people penning words of this sort, given my own, shall we say, interesting history on the subject. But at least I can claim that I am the victim of perfidious fortune, rather than the shaper thereof, at least with respect to my HOX genes.

[lordpasternack]

*cough*

I think this is all one great big fucking mess, and Richard would have done far better to try to embrace me rather than trying to filter me out - but I WOULD say that, wouldn't I?

http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 60#p918839

*ahem*

...who needs to continue to worry about credibility once you become Richard's protégé, anyway. It's not like he bothers to engage his critical faculties once you reach a certain level of Golden Child in his eyes... And why do we need to worry about being accountable to anyone but ourselves anyway, since it's OUR site? If we want to be hubristic wankers and sap the site slowly from the inside, and appear to go out of our way to piss a lot of people off in the process, that's our privilege, isn't it?

And I, Richard Dawkins, want a site more dedicated to Reason and Science, even though I hardly fucking looked at the science and reason-themed sections of the old site - and even though it's going to take that upstart little bastard lordpasternack to point out that the revamped site has as much true reason and science content as a Tesco Value sausage roll has meat content, before I actually notice this small triviality - and make some effort to try to fix it - by posting mailing-list fodder science news. But that's rhetoric for you - that's not living up to your own values for you - that's showing that even incredibly intelligent minds can be disgracefully stupid, insincere and short-sighted, for you.

http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 27#p919027

[lordpasternack]

He spoke English in a honeyed voice of the best Old Etonian blend. It was easy to imagine with what lordly indifference he had brushed off his blunders in the First World War. He must have lived in a magic circle. Even after his vanity and ignorance had damaged Germany in the eyes of the world, he was still received by the Kaiser to give his views on submarine warfare. Unfortunately, he was 'hardly allowed to get a word in' [comment from von Papen's memoirs].

...

The statement which he made to me that afternoon was exquisite.

"I cannot understand why I find myself in this position, Herr Major".

"Why not read the indictment and you will see."

Ahehehe...

For the record - I did once have sex with an old Oxonian lecture (who wasn't Dawkins) - which was in equal parts endearing and embarrassing... Naive attempts at 'filthy' sex-talk, clashing with quaint English politeness and reserve... Asking me if I could be a dirty little slut - "if it wouldn't be too much trouble, please" - and things like that...

Everytime I see that type of personality - I get vivid flashbacks of that evening, and feel the cringe run down my spine anew. Though I suppose it was fairly benign as trauma goes.

[JacksSmirkingRevenge]

Benign trauma...I quite like the sound of that.