Friday, February 01, 2013
The Kansas City Royals made the NRA enemies list somehow
(hardballtalk.nbcsports.com)
posted on February 01, 2013 at 03:01 PM by RoyalsRetro (AG#1F) to gun control, mike torrez, nra, royals
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43 comment(s)
Read More...Thank God, then, for the NRA. A few minutes ago I saw people tweeting about the “enemies list” they apparently keep. In the NRA’s parlance, a list of “National Organizations with Anti-Gun Policies.” Which, sure, if you’re an advocacy group you understandably want to keep a list of people who oppose your agenda, so fair enough. But the list is pretty hilarious, mostly because it goes way beyond actual opposition groups who work to counter the NRA’s agenda and seems to include ...
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< 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 >Fascinating.
Chamberlain's offense consisted mostly of dunks or easy layups from a standing position and an unstoppable fadeaway short jump shot. You'd never see him drive the lane, which is where he would've been most likely to pick up offensive fouls. Instead, he'd pass off to his many talented teammates like Chet Walker or Elgin Baylor who specialized in that sort of thing.
The truth is that with the exception of a few extremely quick and nimble centers like Bill Russell and Dave Cowens, the great majority of Wilt's one-on-one opponents were much more likely to foul him out of frustration than to be on the receiving end of Wilt's fouls. Compared to Wilt, nearly other contemporary center in Wilt's era, at least until late in his career, was immobile to an extent that you can't even imagine today. He didn't need to foul them to assert total domination.
"Lance, was cheating cancer your first duplicitous act?"
I was using it to prove a point about Medieval history! I know that no one cares about my childhood interest in Strathclyde any more than they care about the statistics I compiled on my favorite video game when I was 12. It was rigged, by the way. Your shooting percentage depended more on the score than on your shot selection. I have reams of data to prove it.
1. He didn't foul much to begin with, as Andy said. He didn't need to.
2. The few times he got into foul trouble, he'd be very careful on defense. Maybe to the detriment of his team. Wilt was as stat-aware as possibly any player, ever, and this never fouled out thing was a source of pride to him.
3. At least on one occasion he committed what looked to be a 6th foul, and stared down the referee. The ref was too scared to actually blow the whistle. I don't remember the source for this story.
For the record, I consider the medieval history of the British Isles to be on par with the epic poems of Scandanvia and, well, Ireland, not on par with the history of Rome or the Caliphates. No one wrote down what the barbarians in Europe were doing.
Understood, and somewhat stipulated. Certainly we know less, definitively, about the princes and kings of Middle Ages Europe than we do about the lineages of Roman emperors or the Caliphates. But it's not like we're reading the history of the era via Beowulf or the Irish epics.
I think my feeling on this is colored by none of my knowledge of history being from a primary source. I mean, I know historians do yeoman's work digging through actual records but what I know is from texts and lectures. While it may be exceedingly unlikely that the whole world has been fooled, I know, deep down, that it would be very, very easy to fool ME. Thus, my sort of uneasy feeling about it all.
Perhaps conspiracy theories use this feeling as traction. While I find it very unlikely that the gummint crashed planes into the Towers, I wasn't there. I have to believe a lot of people I don't actually know. That is very reasonable most of the time but when the story is fantastic, and you're lying in bed wondering about it, the fact that you don't actually know any of the actors involved gives you a feeling of being on quicksand.
Well Wilt was also quite fond of driving across the middle from the low post and finger-rolling to the rim. Amazingly graceful footwork for such a huge man, I don't think it was surpassed until Hakeem came into the league.
The fact that Muslims were the primary innovators and civilized folks, while Christians in Europe were mucking about in pig ####, doesn't mean that civilization ended. The "Middle Ages" saw the invention of calculus and physics, more or less. It just too "Christendom" a thousand years to catch up.
You must be talking about the Dark Ages. By 1100-1200, the pace of innovation in Europe was higher than in the Muslim world. The Muslims were ahead, but Europe had already started to catch up; as illustrate by their ability to project power a long distance during the Crusades.
The issues the Muslim states had, is that much of their science, trade, innovation, etc. was done by their Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, and other non-Muslim subjects (working for Muslim rulers) building on a pre-Muslim Byzantine and Egyptian civilization/culture. Islam discouraged progress and innovation, but the ruler were able to leverage non-Muslim populations to keep moving ahead. As more and more of the population converted (under the pressure of discrimination) they lost access to this cadre, and society stultified.
It's actually a very good case example in favor of diversity and toleration. When Muslim states were heterogeneous, they advanced rapidly. As they became more intolerant/homogeneous, they stagnated.
This is like saying the pace of innovation today is higher in militant Islamic regions, due to al-Q's ability to project power over long distance. It's also a bit like saying Ireland or China's economy is strong than the US economy because of pace of growth, while ignoring that it's a lot easier to get from 0 to 1 than from 99 to 100.
This is just wrong. I'll write it off as ignorance rather than bigotry.
This is fantastically true. The early Caliphates were the most modern, inclusive and advanced societies of their time.
History is totally sweet and the lack of information is part of the charm for me. I never cared as much for well-sourced modern history.
The greatest thinkers of the Mediterranean world between Augustine and Aquinas were basically Maimonides and a bunch of Muslims. We could go on for quite a while about advances made by practicing Muslims in trigonometry and astronomy and navigation and so on.
Whatever we think about post-Medieval Islam, Medieval Islam did very well at preserving and expanding on the Greek (etc.) achievement and in borrowing good ideas from India and elsewhere. The Medieval experience would suggest that there is nothing in Islam per se that makes it incompatible with science and learning.
I don't think the Alhambra in Grenada would be considered an early caliphate period, but its the most impressive thing I've ever seen, considering when it was built.
I think that's pretty clearly wrong. Indeed the single most important factor in the advances of the west was probably the fall of Granada (and the rediscovery of a lot of Greek works as well as things like Alhazen's work on optics -- well lots of work by Alhazen.). IOW you're about 3-4 centuries off.
Maybe not early, but early-middle Umayyad era for initial construction (889.) Finished during the high caliphates in the 1330s.
Also notable as a last redoubt of civilization in Al-Andalus as the Christian barbarians stormed back into the Iberian peninsula during the Reconquista.
The early Muslim states were rich/advanced because they inherited advanced Byzantine/Greek/Egyptian and Persian civilizations and societies. The Arab rulers contributed virtually nothing to societies besides a military caste. To the extent Muslim states were rich and advanced, it had nothing to do with being Muslim.
Okay, maybe it's just blind bigotry.
You'd know what that looks like, but there's nothing bigoted about it. I dislike Islam on perfectly rational grounds.
Let me try to parse this, are you denying that there were a great number of Muslims in the dark and middle ages working in the arts and sciences who made great advances across a wide number of fields, or are you saying that their advances were built largely off the advanced civilizations that came before them?
Even if you're right, it only means that the Arab states were at or near the heights of civilization eight or nine centuries ago, but couldn't keep up with those heights as the rest of the world progressed.(*)
Which -- we can be sure -- is primarily Whitey's fault.
(*) If all you're saying is that there were individual Muslims who were tremendously intelligent, wise, and accomplished well, yeah -- there are a bunch today, too.
Are you equally willing to write off the entire Renaissance as nothing more than a few plagiarists cribbing notes from the Greeks and Egyptians? Because if you're going to hand-wave away the Islamic Golden Age and House of Wisdom eras because they're just cribbing notes from the Greeks and Persians, you damned well better be ready to dismiss Aquinas and Augustine for the same damned thing. The notable difference being that Aquinas was cribbing Aristotle via the Muslim translations.
The original argument here was that we might have "lost history" in the "Middle Ages" because no one was keeping records in Europe at the time. I pointed out that this was a Eurocentric fallacy, and that we have lots of history from that time frame, just from the centers of civilization of the world at the time rather than the barbaric corners of Europe. The entire discussion has been about historic centers of learning and cultural contributions to world civilization and learning by various cultures. It's a thread about history, #######. Try to read for comprehension next time.
Not at all. I'm not denying that there were a large number of excellent Muslim thinker throughout the pre-modern period. There were many. There were also many Christians, Jews, Zoroasrians and other non-Muslims contributing heavily to the innovation and prosperity of the Muslim states.
What I'm denying is that Muslim religion or culture had anything to do with that innovation. It hindered it. Those many innovative Muslims succeeded b/c they had access to predecessor cultures that fostered innovation and science. As Islam waxed, and those cultures waned, the innovation died. As those states became more uniformly Muslim in religion and culture (the Caliphates were <50% Muslim well into the early Middle Ages), they stagnated.
Oof. That's going to leave a mark.
It certainly started out as derivative. But, the big difference is the Renaissance didn't peter out. The innovation continued, until this very day in the West.
The Islamic world had innovation, and lost it and stagnated, b/c of the constraints of their religion and culture.
This is true of all reactionaries, be they Islamic or Teajadi. Reactionary thinking is nostalgia for a false history.
You might, just for a second, consider the facts of geography and resources in your sweeping generalities.
I know, which is why I was willing to concede, arguendo, your assertion that Snapper's view was not only "Eurocentric," but bigoted. From there, I suggested the correct historical conclusion.
Culture trumps those things hands down.
Spain and France had resources and geographical advantages that made Britain and the Netherlands look like backwaters. They controlled the richest lands, and most productive industrial areas in Europe in the 16th-17th centuries. Plus Spain had a massive stream of Gold and Silver from the Americas.
Yet under their centralized, dirigiste systems, they could never keep up in innovation or trade. A tiny, poor, island started the Industrial Revolution because of its culture, system and structures.
Hmm. Perhaps I should read for comprehension next time. (You could not bury the lede with the "whitey" snark.)
The decline of the Islamic empire is analogous to the decline of Rome. The primary failures of the Caliphates, aside from the political infighting which eventually pierce the heart of all imperial powers as they disintegrate, was the fact that it was centered in a desert.
Assertion and faith, layered in blind bullshitting.
The British empire won because of its navy, and because it was an island and more or less impregnable until the advent of aerial bombardment.
A bunch of craggy-ass rocks in the middle of nowhere populated by different races who didn't like each other. And that had been colonized by foreigners, no less, the supposed kiss of death to future development.
And these are...
Their are three great burgeoning of original thought in world history; the Spring and Autumn Period in China, the Greek awakening, and 18th century Germany.
It did okay even then.
Needlessly pissing off the Mongols didn't help either, though of course they likely would have found a different pretext to invade anyway.
So wake me when their ideas and example, like Rome's, resuscitate themselves in anything like Western civilization, ca. 1750-2001.
We're going to be waiting a long, long, long time.
Stipulated. Of course, the British Empire hasn't added all that much more than the Islamic Golden Age in the world-historic sense of things. A few recyclings of German and French theory out of the Enlightenment, politically, and quick adaption of mechanized production. It's hardly stunning.
Have you done calculus recently? Astronomy?
EDIT: This is, absolutely, nothing more than blind cultural bigotry. I thought you guys were smarter than this.
Your ignorance is shocking. Anatolia is not a desert. The Nile Valley is not a desert. The Tigris/Euphrates valleys are not a desert.
In the pre-modern period, these areas were far richer agricultural than any land in Europe. Just look at the population density.
Assertion and faith, layered in blind bullshitting.
And you read a book that wanted to make non-Westerners look better in spite of their failure to keep up with the West for 600 years.
The British empire won because of its navy, and because it was an island and more or less impregnable until the advent of aerial bombardment.
What do either of those factors have to do with the Industrial revolution? And, by the way, the Royal Navy's success is a cultural factor. French ships were better, ship for ship, in the 18th and 19th century. The Royal navy won because it had a better system for building, maintaining, and crewing warships: e.g. meritocratic officer selection, and advanced (for the time) dockyard bureaucracies.
These are complicated stories, and splitting out what "came from" religion and what "came from" culture or geography or previous cultures is usually an opportunity for ignorant interested bullshitting masquerading as history. That's certainly what snapper's been doing.
Again, I'll stipulate to anything you want to say about the provenance of these things. What about the more sophisticated applications of these things to human affairs -- like sending men to the Moon? All credit for those things go to the people who first conceptualized a derivative equation?
None of which were the centers of the Caliphates at their height. And of course, they are all (Anatolia accepted) surrounded by inaccessible geographies. You're making a bad impression, Snap.
EDIT: I wrote too quickly; obviously Baghdad was the center of the height of the Golden Age. But to pretend that it was a massively supported, resource rich region is absurd. I assume Snapper picked the other locations due to Grenada and Cairo's role in Islamic history. It is equally wrongheaded.
Am I to write off Socrates, Plato and Aristotle because Greece has never sent a man to the moon?
Islam takes Mohammed as the perfection of man. He was the perfect human, and is the model for all law/culture. Therefore, everything is based on what he allegedly wrote (Koran) or said/did (Hadiths). This belief creates a backward looking mindset, and a deep suspicion of innovation and change. You can see the same problem among Christians who subscribe to Biblical literalism, and Sola Scriptura.
Add to that the Muslim conception of God is the He is pure will. God is not bound by logic or rationality in the Muslim view. He acts as He wills when He will. This also imbues a lack of interest in developing thought using logic. There is no Muslim equivalent to the long history of Christian Theology developing new ways of understanding God and Scripture. Their theology centers on interpreting what Mohammed wrote, did and said.
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