quote:
Oh, I forgot. I've been banned at Terry's forum. I am simply crushed!! salty
Are you? But it's what you wanted it, isn't it? How many times have you asked to be banned there? It seems to happen pretty regularly.
People who don't follow that board probably don't realise that. They should read through your past posts over the last year or so. Every now and then you start insulting others and then ask to be banned or suggest that you should be banned. Terry comes back, regular as clockwork, and tells you how important you are, how you are the "Darwinists' worst nightmare" and so on. Hey presto! You feel wanted again. For the next couple of weeks you regularly refer to his supporting words in your posts. After a while this wears off an it's time for you to start again with the insults and asking to be banned, and so the cycle continues.
Maybe this time it actually happened and Ilion took you at your word and banned you? I notice it was lifted pretty damn quickly. And guess wwhat - you continued to post there, just as you have done on every occasion you have asked to be banned, or claimed to be on the verge of giving up posting.
Of course the whole thing is a complete pose. You don't need to be banned from Terry's forum - just don't visit it again! All this asking to be banned or suggesting you should be banned is nothing more than manipulative attention seeking. If they ban you, you can feel victimised and justified in your chosen self-image as a curmudgeonly outsider - if they do not ban you, but ask you to stay or even reinforce how important it is that you do stay, it feeds your ego even more. Your constant juggling of these contradictions is pretty transparent in your posts on that forum and on quite a few in this one.
This kind of attention-seking would be frowned upon in kindergarten. From a soi-disant scientist it is, frankly, a bit disturbing.
The need to always represent your position as contrary to others; the self-deprecation often quite strongly put; the suggestions and requests (even demands) to be rejected; the occasional episodes of fairly detailed discussion which quickly lapse into defensive insults and arguments from authority (you're not disagreeing with me but with these great scientists ...); and above all the cyclical nature of these habits suggest there is something not quite comfortable going on here.
Does anyone on the board know the circumstances of salty's retirement from the university? He jumped before he was pushed, I know, but beyond that have only read his own account.
There is another point that may have passed people's attention. Salty claims his semi-meiotic hypothesis is eminently testable. He also explains that he cannot test it because he no longer has a laboratory. However, he first published the hypothesis in 1984 while still in post at the university. Yet none of his papers include any indication that he did the slightest experimental work, or made any attempt to systematically test his "eminently testable" hypothesis. As a recent post on Terry's board suggested, even funding for such work would not have been a problem. salty suggests the parthenogenesis of some turkeys is semi-meiotic in origin - yet he never thought of approaching the poultry industry for funding to research the origin of this highly sought after trait?
Salty will no doubt see all this as a personal attack, but rather it is an attack on his methods of discussion which
are intentionally intensely personal. Salty has an interesting but as yet unsupported hypothesis. The quality of the hypothesis is quite independent of his means of promulgating it. It is primarily salty who intensely personalizes the discussion of his hypothesis. I am seeking to set that personalization in context.
[This message has been edited by Mister Pamboli, 03-27-2003]
™ Version 4.2