Noyau (1)

…the noyau, an animal society held together by mutual animosity rather than co-operation

Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative.

2,559 thoughts on “Noyau (1)”

  1. Aardvark:
    It is simply impossible to have honest discussions with people for whom ‘lying-for-Jesus’ is a virtue, not a vice; a feature, not a bug.

    Is this the thread where we get to post anything that is off limits in all the other threads?

  3. I am so proud to have the lead-off comment in this new thread. I think it is so utterly appropriate that I have been accorded that honor. Thank you Elizabeth!

  4. My kids being older now, I had no idea what what the Disney/Pixar flick Inside Out was about until I read the (very unfavorable) Richard Brody review in the NYer yesterday. Dunno if the movie is any good or not, but the concept behind it reminds me of a couple lines from a John Berrryman poem (about Beethoven) that I love:

    “Who was I?
    Am I these tutti, am I this rallentando?
    This entrance of the oboe?
    I am all these.”

  5. For a popular entertainment, I found Inside Out brilliant, funny and moving (once you get past all the little homunculi running around).

    Your quote reminds me of a musing of mine (40 years ago):

    Am I the arrangement on the table?
    Am I the footprints in the path?

    Between left and right,
    below up, above down,

    through the window, between seer and seen.

  6. Nice.

    BTW, while we’re into random musings, I saw this tweet from Bleacher Report today:

    VIDEO: Thiago Santos viciously knocks out Steve Bosse with a brutal head kick in the 1st round http://ble.ac/1LOu9ZB

    and I wondered aloud: Is that supposed to be a GOOD thing?

  7. spin keiths spin!

    There’s got to be a way to make the completely mundane into something sinister and to be feared.

    No wonder you fit in so well in the anti-ID camp.

  9. Mung:
    I am so proud to have the lead-off comment in this new thread. I think it is so utterly appropriate that I have been accorded that honor. Thank you Elizabeth!

    I knew I could count on your sense of fitness, Mung 🙂

  10. RB, Serendipitously, someone sent me this yesterday:

    From The Adventures Of Augie March by Saul Bellow:

    …all the while you thought you were going around idle,
    terribly hard work was taking place. Hard, hard work,
    excavation and digging, mining, moling through tunnels,
    heaving, pushing, moving rock, working, working, working,
    working, working, panting, hauling, hoisting. And none of
    this work is seen from the outside. It’s internally done.
    It happens because you are powerless and unable to
    get anywhere, to obtain justice or have requital,
    and therefore in yourself you labor, you wage and
    combat, settle scores, remember insults, fight,
    reply, deny, blab, denounce, triumph, outwit,
    overcome, vindicate, cry, persist, absolve, die
    and rise again. All by yourself!
    Where is everybody?
    Inside your breast and skin,
    the entire cast.

  11. Could have been your autobiography, walto.

    The only things missing are “make false accusations” and “tell people to go fuck themselves”.

  14. keiths:
    Could have been your autobiography, walto.

    The only things missing are “make false accusations” and “tell people to go fuck themselves”.

    OK, well, here’s the best I’ll do for you (with apologies to Bellow)

    …all the while you thought you were going around idle,
    terribly hard work was taking place. Hard, hard work,
    excavation and digging, mining, moling through tunnels,
    heaving, pushing, moving rock, working, working, working,
    working, working, panting, hauling, hoisting. And none of
    this work is seen from the outside. It’s internally done.
    It happens because you are powerless and unable to
    get anywhere, to obtain justice or have requital,
    and therefore in yourself you labor, you wage and
    combat, settle scores, remember insults, fight,
    tell people to go fuck themselves,
    make accusations, (true or false),
    reply, deny, blab, denounce, triumph, outwit,
    overcome, vindicate, cry, persist, absolve, die
    and rise again. All by yourself!
    Where is everybody?
    Inside your breast and skin,
    the entire cast.

    It’ll have to do.

  16. A friend at work (who is not looking for a job herself) had this on her desk today: http://www.contingencies.org/marapr2015/JobSeeker_2015_cover_small.jpg

    It inspired me to write this:

    To the tune of Moon River

    Job Seeker, grab your paper file
    Don’t give in for a while today
    Oh, math reeker, you data leaker
    Wherever you’re going, I’m staying away

    Two vitae off to see the world
    The conference has a table there
    You’re after the same perks and cash
    Don’t waste time at the bash, don’t bother with the hash
    Job seeker, grow a pair.

  17. Gregory on July 9, 2015 at 8:45 pm said:

    “Hi, I’m an atheist. I like Elizbeth Liddle’s “Skeptical Zone”. I know relatively little about religion (though I might care to someday). I’m numb. I’m insensitive. I’m a ‘rational idiot.’ But that doesn’t make me inhuman (I demand ‘justice’ and ‘human rights’). Except that I feel strange when I read fanatics like 3 or 4 at TSZ who are haters. I wanna believe them, but they sound so callous, empty and illogical.”

    Hi, my name is Gregory. I have no fucking idea what I’m talking about, ever, so I like to call people names who maybe know some stuff. It makes me feel important. I am a “believer” which I think I got from a song by the Monkees. They seemed so cool and smart to me! Being a believer is good. Being an atheist is bad. So I am not an atheist. I am not “skeptical” either because that is also bad. So, when I call people names, I like to call them atheists and skeptical, because those are bad things.

    I also hate oldness and cats. Old people, because they smell bad, and cats because old people sometimes have them.

  18. Me, Gregory again. I forgot to say that I’m treated really bad here. I should get to call atheists (bad people) bad names because there was this other song where I learned that it’s good to be bad to the bad. When Lizzie treats me bad here, she doesn’t realize it, but SHE’S the one being bad. Because it’s bad to be bad to the good. And I’m good, because I’m not an atheist or a skeptic or a philosophist or old and I don’t have any cats.

  19. walto,

    “Have you stopped feeding your cats?”
    “I don’t have any cats”
    “That’s a yes, then.”

  21. Gregory here. I don’t like hotshoe, because she’s at least 100, and so she probably has like 10 cats, and plus she’s also an atheist and a skeptic. I think that makes her triple bad (or whatever the four bad things one is) because like atheist is one and skeptic is two and old is three and probably having 10 cats is four. So that’s fourtuple, I guess. Which is so so evil that she’s probably a philosophist too, which would mean six bad things!

    I really hate bad people, and wish they would get what they deserve more, which is to be called bad names, not only by me, but by everybody.

    Especially if they’re old.

  22. Oh, I forgot, she’s also from the U.S.! I can’t even get my head around how bad she is!! I bet her cats are American tabbies, which everybody knows are the worst cats. And if she has 10, like I think she must, at least six of them must be old and even smellier than usual, especially in cat years!

    What a bitch she is!

  23. I’m feeling a bit less embarrassed by my showing on the cake thread.

  24. I am now enjoying this thread, despite my HPSS shortcomings. Given Gregory’s inability to sway the unwashed, ignorant masses here despite his brobdignagian intellect, I am trying to muster the thought “why does he bother?”.

    I also like cats.

  25. Walto’s avatar looks like an orange penis. So HE’S probably a big penis! But not really a BIG one if you know what I mean. Because then he wouldn’t need a carrot that looked like a big penis to show off around here. How sad is that?

    But it’s not just him. If you think about it, ALL skeptic atheists should have that avatar, because they all don’t have God and don’t realize that they’re spiritual, so their penises are small and they need an avatar like that or they’re girls. And if they’re girls, they’re probably old and have cats. So not really girls but old, smelly women.

    Philosophists suck as much as skeptics and atheists, but in a way they’re worse because of their penises.

  30. I love cats, but I am not that old [1], not a woman [2], and have only the one [3].

    [1] depending on how you define “old”
    [2] depending on how you define “woman”
    [3] depending on how you define “one”

  32. Well, that whole Gregory episode was as much fun as anything you can do with your clothes on. Err, no, as much disappointment as anything …

    I’m going to share a convo Martin Freeman had:

    MC: Do you have any questions for me?
    MF: Why have you got two unicorns fucking on your T-shirt?
    MC: I wore this actually for you because I know you love unicorns.
    MF: Unicorns and rainbows, yeah. Thank you.
    MF: And they are making more unicorns that I can love.

    Thanks for cheering me up, y’all. 🙂

  33. hotshoe_: Well, that whole Gregory episode was as much fun as anything you can do with your clothes on.

    I’ll admit that I treated it as entertainment.

    My reaction to some of what Gregory said: personally, I consider hotshoe_ as one if the nicer participants in our discussion. A bit cheeky, for sure, but it is all good natured.

  34. Aww, thanks, Neil.

    Where’s the blushing emoji when I need it.

    “bit cheeky”, yeah, that’s good. 🙂

    I might have saved everyone a world of trouble if I had chosen that for my self description months ago, instead of “rude and mean” which seems to have set Gregory off into a fit ever since.

  35. I guess I should have said that I assume we all know what I am talking about when I say I have a cat.

    Also, he has all four legs, but he’s been neutered. So maybe he’s not a real cat, or he’s a defective cat. I can say though that he’s not married and I am his only family.

  38. Hi I’m William, I don’t care about the truth, only my feels. Please debate me on the interwebs. My other hobby is disowning crap a previously wrote in books.

  39. It’s rather hilarious, really. All this sudden concern for “THE TRUTH” from people.

    To the tune of I’m a Lumberjack:

    Oh I’m a hypocrite and that’s ok …

    [I’ll work out the rest of the lyrics, maybe. Could be fun.]

  40. I think most here care about the truth. They may not have it, but they seek it. That’s what makes discourse worth while.

  41. I just wanted to post here (too), that I’m mad that keiths didn’t get a screenshot this time. I think he should be required to get somebody to hang around when he goes on vacay next time.

    There’s no telling what people (especially me!) might get up to without his watchful eye.

  43. I think one of them was actually PURPLE. Truth be known, I had been trying to actually bomb the entire site to oblivion but couldn’t figure out how to do it, not knowing HTML. If it hadn’t become clear to me then that you’d always be around to foil my plans, I’d have certainly learned how to crush this place by now.

    Post a video too!

  45. keiths:
    KN:

    Allan:

    There’s good ridicule/mockery/sarcasm and bad ridicule/mockery/sarcasm.Mocking the nose of someone you disagree with — bad.Mocking the views of someone you disagree with, by pointing out the ridiculous aspects — good.

    Larry Moran provides an example of the latter:

    Sam Harris using ridicule to excellent effect.


    I’d like to move that keith (“the scarecrow”) s, in virtue of his ENORMOUS HEART, should be named the guy to monitor which mocking posts are ok and which are over the line because they’re too darn MEAN!

  46. walto: I’d like to move that keith (“the scarecrow”) s, in virtue of his ENORMOUS HEART, should be named the guy to monitor which mocking posts are ok and which are over the line because they’re too darn MEAN!

    I’m hurt, walto. You know I’ve had my eye on that job since before I started commenting here.

    And I’ve been honing my MEANNESS on purpose because – well, how can you tell where the line is, if you never get close enough to go over the line yourself?

    Don’t tell me I’ve wasted all that effort!

  47. Would you consider the post of Vice-Chairman of MMM (Mean Mock Monitoring), hotshoe? I mean your heart is definitely big, but keiths’ is ENORMOUS. He’s always been so sensitive and careful not to hurt anybody’s feelings. That’s just the guy’s M.O. If he ever gets the sense he even MIGHT be treading too hard, he just stops. Poof. Not another syllable.

    He was born for the job.

  48. I decline your generous nomination, walto, because I think that everyone — including you, definitely — should learn to make that distinction, rather than having it made for them.

  49. Maybe once I grow into my big boy pants. In the meantime, I’m sorry you’re not available. It’d be a perfect fit for your sensibilities!

Comments are closed.