Greg, you're making me dizzy — jamalrob

Here's your previous post without any content in the quote.

Just fixed it!

Meow!

GREG

I'll use that in the next post and here I'll edit in what it is I just did.

This might be fun, if not just plain confusing as hell.

Meow!

GREG

What I did... (I'll try to get this to make sense)

... was mark a line to quote.

For some reason the line did not take, but only the little arrow and the user I was quoting made it on the post I was trying to post.

I wanted to edit and add the line quote back in, but I could not find anyway to do that.

My figuring was to delete and write a 'do over'.

The delete did not work, so I was stuck with a sort of empty post followed with what I wanted to post.

Now I just had the brainfart to open the correctly written post and copy/paste the quote into the first post where I made the mistake and it took.

I have more or less found a 'long way around' to fix adding a quote if you didn't get it right the first time.

All I'd have to do is quote it again if I was going to post it again. Write it all correctly, then copy/paste that correctly written bit into the post that was incorrect in the edit function. Then, I'd simply cancel the second attempt and there'd be no double post.

(welcome to the world Mayor of Simpleton's guide to computer trickery)

Does that sort of make any sense?

Meow!

GREG

I can actually demonstrate what I accidentally found out if you'd like me to.

Update...

Indeed my trick worked.

Now I have what looks like a double post in the http://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/33/things-at-the-old-place-have-changed#Item_8 .

I did a 'cut and paste' of what I did wrong in the first post from what I did correct in the second post.

Now all I need to have is an ad or mod delete one of the posts.

Meow!

GREG

btw... did anyone understand what I just said? Sometimes I manage to confuse myself with myself.

The 'edit' seems to work with no problem.

What happened in my case was that I wanted to quote something and it didn't take. So after posting it, I wanted to add in the quote, but this was not possible. So I tried to delete the post and that was not possible.

So I simply edited the post to the bone and reposted what I intended to post in the first place.

It seems to be once posted it is there (basta) and if you missed the quote, you can't really get that back in either.

I'm sure with time and trial and error (in my case lots of error) it'll be no problem. I'm usually good at tricking systems.

(I just had an idea! I'll try it out.)

Meow!

GREG

I did send out 50 invites to the potential "safety boat" (in case PF dies) via PF PMs... but I maxed it out and had to quit for a little while.

Anyway...

... it seems this 'Ark' is about to become a 'luxury cruise ship' and PF might well hit an iceberg.

Meow!

GREG

Possible something for 'bug report'... which me might need.

I cannot seem to delete a post if I wish to.

The 'cancel' doesn't seem to delete.

Is there a trick to this?

Meow!

GREG

It's possible to feel bad for superadmin here, he's acquired the site and immediately been thrown in over his head like a child-king trying to quell a rebellion. — shmik

Well said...

... I nearly would like to suggest this as his future avatar:



Meow!

GREG

Sort of like my cool Converse All-Stars that I've been wearing for over 30 years and my 25 year old Green Lantern, Superman, Flash, Hulk and Batman t-shirts.

I'm so damned behind the times I'm ahead of them again. 8-)

... but I did stop wearing my 30 year old Ray Bans. I can bear to look at myself wearing such a thing anymore with all the damned hippster wannabes. :B

Oh well...

... atleast no one has this yet:

Meow! (a mayor original!) ;)

GREG

Thanks Mongrel!

I wanted to start this thread, but considering my history it would be a bit too self-indulgent.

For you:



Meow!

GREG

Jamalrod — Wosret

Seriously!

Jamalrod?

Is that something you purchase in the shop behind these nice gentlemen in the video? :-O



Meow!

GREG

edit: I know this thread was just for posting videos but there was some discussion about what "woo" means as a slang word. — Pneumenon

Actually, it's not for only posting videos.
I just tend to do that a lot.

I saw a category called 'woo'. I'm maybe a cat, but not such a 'hip cat' with all the new urban slang.

(I just said 'hip cat'... which probably is evidence of me being a bit behind in my urban slang. :D )

Meow!

GREG

I'm over 50 now so I sort of 'let go of the flow':



... see I had to post a video. I can't seem to help myself.

Btw, MOS, we do agree that that’s the symptom and not the problem. We probably don’t agree on the specifics of the problem, I guess. — Πετροκότσυφας

This is probably the case.

I need a bit of time to settle my brain after yesterday.

We (the group that I work with in Traiskirchen) only dealt directly with ca. 400 of the refugees yesterday of the ca. 5000 and I was relieved this morning just as another ca. 6000 - 8000 new ones arrived. Another 14000 are expected over the weekend and possibly over 50000 over the next 10 days. Truth is, there is only space to deal with maybe 3000, so this situation is beyond any realistic controls.

Most of the refugees cannot seem to think clearly anymore, due to physical and mental exhaustion. The efforts to explain why they need to be processed is difficult to explain. Most come from a country or a culture that has no understanding of the how's and whys of this concept of processing. Add to this mix various bad experience with police and military... these are the people who have to do crowd control for the sake of public safety (both local and refugee public)... I think you get the picture.

On top of this, I found myself speaking with many official, both police and military and had to make effort to get them to see that this is not an invasion... truth is... it looks like one, but really isn't.

They, for the most part, have been far too close to the situation for too long to see that they are dealing with a symptom.

Anyway...

... everyone, refugees, processors, police and military are trying to be patient. The problem is it is not really stopping and seems to be snowballing more and more.

I feel on thing that is lost in this debate is the reality for individuals vs. the political/theoretical concepts and models.

Anyway...

... I'm going back on Monday. We have to take atleast 2 days off before we are allowed to help again. Burn out is really something that has to be taken into consideration and fortunately is being taking into consideration.

There is now talk of building a physical border around Europe by many politicians. I need to look into what that entails, but it somehow sounds more like panic than realistic policy.

WOW!

Meow!

GREG

edit: for what this is worth, the majority of the refugees yesterday were not from Syria, but from Eritrea.

Officially the Eritreans are not considered refugees. This is messy, but public opinions about Eritrea vs. Syria might matter here too.

I used to think that such numbers were absurd, but this year I've been to both Nickelsdorf (7 times) and Spielfeld (5 times) to help out. Also, I work directly with situation in Traiskirchen (it's next to a baseball field I play at often)...

It's mind blowing!

Politics is in this day and age run nearly exclusively upon fear and this just plays into the hands of those who profit most from such fears. It is also a day and age of 'pass the blame' as well as 'pass the responsibility'.

On thing that is quite often lost in the matter is that no government, in spite of all the tell tell signs and knowledge of what is going on in the lands where these people have fled, had the foresight to set up any provisions or have an 'if it happens' plan.

Honestly, I really feel for the refugees, but why are they refugees?

Who put the people into the positions of power to make them flee?

I often wonder if we are not indeed self-willing victims of prefered cults of personality?

Anyway...

Nearly none of them wanted to leave and become refugees, but they more or less had too... be it for political, religious or economic reasons, but there was (in their eyes) no other choice.

There is now more and more the confusion that dealing with the refugee flood is the problem, where indeed it is just a symptom. I really fail to see where any government, be it individual governments, the EU or even opposition has really made any comment that would deal with the actual cause for this symptom.

The result of confusing the symptom as being the cause has make hyper nationalistic spin win the upper hand with the fearful and uninformed. My fear is that this might indeed result in an even larger problem than the current issues of dealing with immigration /refugees. Personally, I've grown very weary of a 'blame the government' for people who have individual bias, fears and found those upon ignorance blindly following a cult of personality rather than taking responsibility to think things through for themselves.

I'm starting to rant now...

... I need to get some work done. (the local authorities are trying to track down the where abouts of some 200 to 300 refugees that simply walked away from the processing station last night... it was freezing cold last night and they might not have survived... seems I'm leaving the house in about 30 minutes. It's not nobel. It's not political. It's just common sense.)

Meow!

GREG

This is a source that is, well... not as up to date as it seems... as these are the number of refugees processed. It takes weeks to get those numbers updated.

http://migration.iom.int/europe/

When these countries cannot process them (or simply get fed up with processing them or cannot afford to process them any more), they simply 'push them forward' to the next location for processing.

Slovenia has basically been 'dumped on' by both Croatia and Serbia, as they have reached their processing maximums and now Slovenia is 'dumping on' Austria... along with Hungary, where recently police there guarding a border location to Austria simply walked away and left it uncontrolled allowing the flow to keep on flowing. (as sad as this is, essentially tossing the garbage over the fence into the neighbors yard... believe me, I'm not suggesting they are garbage, but this was the tactic employed).

Remember, these are simply people working at borders and not holders of PhDs in Philosophy.

Truth is... no one knows the real numbers, as to know those numbers they have to be processed. Most of them are yet to be processed; thus the frustration and the loss of patience making refugees take matters into their own hand.

The media paints the situation as horrid, but honestly it's a massive underestimation of the real problems.

Meow!

GREG

This is the real problem...

... this number is the total of refugees that have collectively attempted to reach the boarder there in Slovenia recently, as in the last few months.

No one is really going to have official numbers in newspapers...

... remember when you read such an article as this below indicating that only 2500 refugees can be processed a day, this does not indicate how many refugees are there waiting, have arrive just now, about to arrive or will be there within the next day or two. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/10/151019052823464.html

Think about it...

2500 a day is 25,000 in 10 days and this with people waiting for weeks and even months to be processed. Oh... and this is just a single station that processes refugees.

300,000 is not really unrealistic or off the mark. (personally, I think it is an underestimation)

Estimations within the OSCE human trafficing section are in the 7 figures at the moment. It's as if the entire city of Vienna took what they could manage to carry and walked away.

Meow!

GREG

For what it's worth, I just had a detailed conversation with a good friend of mine who lives on the Austrian/Slovenian and works with the OSCE.

Yesterday, the Slovenian authority were recently confronted with over 300,000 refugees and have organized buses and 'dumped' many of them on the Austrian boarder.

Now I understand Slovenian reaction. This was as if your population increased by 15% in a matter of a few days. They just cannot handle it.

Indeed the refugees are trying to get away from a bad situation, but here was, well... mass stupidity in action.

Since no one was ready or honestly could have been ready for this Tsunami, the condition the refugees are confronted with are not really that favorable. Instead of being somewhat relieved at getting into Europe, the refugees started a mass protest and set the tents the Slovenians provided in a pinch on fire.

OK...

This is like complaining about bad room service in a hotel and making a protest in taking a big shit in your bed, but then realizing that you now have to sleep in a shit bed.

This sort of 'set off' the locals in Slovenian and the government officials decided that the only way to 'solve the problem' quickly was to ship them off to Austria and other lands.

It gets even better.

The buses loaded with refugees arrive at a board town (population of about 977) with over 8000 refugees. The board control there is really not that active and never has been. They have the ability to process maybe 4 to 6 refugees daily. Seriously... this is a road less traveled than many people's driveways.

OK...

... the authorities set up what they could... guess what? Tents!

Needless to say, this pissed off the refugees, as this was a 'bad situation' just before in Slovenia and now upon arriving at the Austrian boarder, they had the same situation, except that it was about 8°C colder and raining. Also, it is Austrian law that all refugees must be processed. Like it or not, one needs some sort of control as well as 'firewall of safety'.

Great...

... so now we have tents again, bad weather and a longer processing time to get anything done.

Some idiot put out the rumor that the German board to Austria was only a few kilometers away.

Well, it is only about 250 km and you'd have to walk over the Alps to get there, but this ain't the 'Sound of Music'. This would take about 56 hours of non-stop walking.

Anyway...

... the result of this was a mass crowd of over 3000 refugees deciding to simply walk across Austria to Germany. Seriously!

The authorities went into panic mode as it was only 45 minutes until the sunset and it was supposed to be anywhere from 2 to -8° C last night. They'd die plain and simple.

They did manage to get nearly everyone back, but some of them just would not stop and the authorities are still searching at this moment for people in the hope that they survived the night.

This is far from over. My wife is in the OSCE today and will try to get me an update.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

How do people in Austria react?

This issue has polarized the Austrians.

On one side they have a lot of sympathy and are trying to help. I cannot be too sure how much of this is all that sincere as most of the refugees as just passing through and want to go to either Germany or Sweden. (Odd with Germany, as they have more paperwork and refugee hatred than in Austria, but hey... it's not my choice).

On the other hand, our hardcore conservative party... hell... call them what they are... the Nazi party... has made great gains on the back of this fear associated with the refugees. The city of Vienna has a vice-Mayor now who's father was a convicted Nazi and this guy has attended many neo-Nazi like organizations as a keynote speaker, but as our liberal society allows freedom of speech as long as it doesn't deny the holocaust, we are stuck with this guy.

Anyway...

This political party (the FPÖ) has managed to make people in Vienna think that the City of Vienna is somehow responsible for the refugee crisis... easy to fool the fearful and lazy, eh... and thus made huge gains in political status. Fear that all of these refugees are (many) better qualified workers and will take away our jobs and 'Islamify' everything.

The people here did the same protest the refugees did in burning the tents. They voted for this FPÖ as a protest against the ruling parties, as if they had any real direct say in the matters of the crisis, and basically decided to 'shit in their own bed' and now have to sleep in a shit bed.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I borrowed the 'shited bed' idea from Stewart Lee...




... it was very funny, but now it's a bit too prophetic.

________________________________________________

Personally I have tried to help out with what little I can, but at the moment the problem seems to be far larger than any plan can cover at the moment.

To stop the flood, one needs to turn off the tap. Until that happens we have to try to find enough containers for all the fluid gushing out... problem is at some point or another many containers are either overfilled or unattractive, but one needs to realize that just finding containers is not an answer to the problem. The problem is the tap and not the flood it has caused.

Meow!

GREG

I'm not too sold on that one.

They usually encourage 'bandwagoning' and other ad populum activities.

'Likes' discourage people taking a few risks in thinking or voicing an somewhat unpopular notion and helps promote academic sterility.

Atleast the votes down are gone. That was the equivalent of a 'pseudo philosophical drive by shooting'. The philosophy of a thug and gangbanger.

Meow!

GREG

It is really quick and I do like that, but I sort of miss my ability to do 'inside jokes' with friends...

... like my DENNY CRANE or my 'rimshot' with 180 Proof and such.

That way I could direct a comment to keep things light without actually putting the discourse off it's tracks... actually allowing it to run off the tracks on it's own.

Probably my taste in how to spice up philosophy with a bit of well needed levity...

... but at times, there are situations where (as Louis Black states regarding politicians) you simply are there to very carefully and gently pull the poles out of people's asses... sniff it out of respect... then oh so carefully and gently put it back in and tell them indeed their shit does not stink. :-O

What better place to do this than the sanitary and isolated quarantine of the internal reply? :D

The problem is that this replay button results in something that looks exactly like a proper post; thus lighting a fire under someone's ass might be well confused with being flamming.

btw... we might wish to place this one in the 'Feedback' section, as it completely lacks everything as philosophy, general or otherwise.

Meow!

GREG

My 'cherry picked non sequitur'...

So, if Grandma is telling me that the horoscope really works, then I don't count that. — Moliere

Tell Grandma that it would be far better if she was a racist.



Meow!

GREG

Not any more. It was a moment of madness. — jamalrob

What a shame...

... I thought is was a special place I was to inhabit since we don't have 'internal replies'. :-*

Meow!

GREG

Finally found the description of 'Woo':

If you think the Solar System might be, like, an atom of a higher dimension, or you're worried about chemtrails, or you've proved quantum mechanics wrong but nobody will listen, post it here. It may get deleted anyway, but it's worth a try.

Not exactly what I thought it might me...

... oh well, I guess I'm not into all the hip and cool slang these kids of today are spouting off.

So... time for a video (dedicated to YHDRS):



Meow!

GREG

Actually...

... we all sort of have that.

All we have to do is 'click' your name to direct to your profile and then 'click' comments in your profile.

Bang!

There is on my screen is a 'wall of wisdom' coming from Miss Georgia herself. :D

Meow!

GREG

Hey...

... when you can't read books, you have to go with what works.

Meow!

GREG

So that's what the big 'G' stands for!

You're really Miss Georgia!!!

Congrats!



Meow!

GREG

Seriously...

... looking at this, who really cares about English grammar?



Meow!

GREG

How would this world differ from one without objective/inherent/intrinsic/absolute/universal morality (henceforth simply referred to as "morality")? — Yahadreas

As far as I could tell, it wouldn't differ at all.

As far as I can tell the world has no objective/inherent/intrinsic/absolute/universal morality, unless we force it upon the world via anthropomorphic bullying.

How would 'we' differ might be an entire different issue, except that we only have a sample size of one 'we' to go by and this one 'we' seems to have a lot of people within that 'we' that cannot seem to do without objective/inherent/intrinsic/absolute/universal morality.

Then again, I'm just me and can't really speak with certainty about 'we'.

Meow!

GREG

The 'human race', eh?



I suppose I can when I'm really really bored or lose my patience.

I try not to care too much, as I would then make proclamation of answers and tell 'em all what to do for their own good or else.

As for how my actions effect humans in 1 year or 10 years or 100 years or longer... gee whiz!

How the heck should I know how and if I'd effect them?

I'm just one of a whole host of variables. I'm not arrogant enough to think that I really MATTER.

Oh well...

... I guess others have different hobbies and degrees of taking those hobbies seriously... for themselves and others.

I try not to be that serious.

Meow!

GREG

If I post a flaming brain fart:


or come from the left as a troll:



Can I report it?

Meow!

GREG

Oh what a happy system! ;)

I can live with that.

btw... I plan to toss something into tests. Just a heads up.

Meow!

GREG

Thank-you!

I'll try to deactivate it now. That way I can quit while I'm ahead.

Meow!

GREG

Here's a bit of the small differences in members...

I'm all for internal replies, as when used properly one can make a quick comment rather than address the entire issue or possible post a non sequitur for the sake of humor to break up the 'over seriousness' that often occurs when a stubborn force meets a stubborn immovable object. This helps keep philosophy less being a boring academic dead from the neck down enterprise.

Now...

Like and dislikes add more nothing than internal replies, as this is just a'hit and run' approach to the thread and post. It is a contentless, lazy and a cowardly act, that simply is an ad populum 'twitterish' illness.

If we have 'like and dislikes' it would be great if we could deactivate that if we so choose.

Meow!

GREG

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!!

I'll trade internal replies to get KwalishKid back in a heart beat!

Meow!

GREG

Could we simply call it 'Fetisch of Religion'? :D

Anyway...

... it's a 'soft target' and a location to rant and rave.

I'd rather think it is more a sub-section of Social Sciences, but I don't think many would agree.

Perhaps we could make it more sexy and exciting by calling it 'Tent Revival' or 'Soapbox Sophistry' la Elmer Gantry? (L)

It has it's place... I suppose.

The bigger question I would have is do we have an option for internal replies?

This is very useful, especially in a Philosophy of Religion section.

Meow!

GREG

Made it!

The site seems very user friendly... or should I say 'idiot user friendly'. as I'm not a tech guy at all.

Nice to see people showing up. Also... that Pneumenon made it. I tried to send out a PM to you, but it bounced back.

I reached my 40 PM limit yesterday for the first time ever sending out invites and managed to do a few more via IM.

Nice to see that Sapientia's hooter is back too!

Now to test the most important function for me...



Yippie! 8-)

Meow!

GREG