How to make Ripperology better?

[Iconoclast]

Oh bullshite, Ike.
I never took you for a man who would have "bought in" to the superficialities of Krafft-Ebing, but it looks like you have.
I suppose next you'll tell me that David Berkowitz thought of his .44 handgun as a substitute penis. A little-too Freudian for my liking.
There is something far more complex and psychologically elusive going on with these reprobates than simply an attempt to get a bone-on.

Well, RJ, I think you misunderstand me - I doubt Chikatilo ever thought of his penis as a .44 in the same way Sam's son didn't think of his .44 as a penis. I've no time for Freudian shite either.

But I do accept that a person's mind can be so corrupted in childhood that physiologically certain things only work if extreme circumstances are met; and I accept that Chikatilo ticked all those boxes. Those who overcome and deal with such trauma should be applauded (if we ever knew who they were) and those who allow themselves to succumb to them should get what Chikatilo got. Not very liberal, I know, but heartfelt nevertheless.

Ike

[Ms Diddles]

Ike - No offense intended, Old Boy--you could be a 6' tall woman living in a nursing home in Montgomery, Alabama, for all I know, but your not infrequent references to haggis, Sir Walter Scott, golf, and freezing your backside off have caused me to forever associate you with Scotland. I doubt this impression is going to go away anytime soon. Anyway, some of my favorite bands are out of Glasgow, so I feel a kinship with that city. It's not an insult.

Sitting here in Glasgow, I really want to ask you about those favourite bands, Roger!!!!

I don't want to get into trouble for de-railing the thread.

Regards from Glasgow though!

[rjpalmer]

Sitting here in Glasgow, I really want to ask you about those favourite bands, Roger!!!!!

Hi Ms. Diddles.

Well, I'll make it brief, so not to derail the thread...

I'm an Indie Rock sort of guy, so it's Belle and Sebastian, The Pastels, Camera Obscura, and Primal Scream.

I draw the line well before the Bay City Rollers, though!

Who am I missing? Any recommendations?

Cheers.

[John Wheat]

Since everyone is talking about the deplorable state and shaking their heads, let's hear it. How precisely can the field of Ripperology be made better. Other than killing off those we don't like, including me: What would you do? And specifically How to make Casebook better?

How to make it a more cooperative, shared effort and less dog-eat-dog?

Ignore the Barrett written Diary and all the buffoons that believe it's written by James Maybrick.

[erobitha]

Ignore the Barrett written Diary and all the buffoons that believe it's written by James Maybrick.

I designed the Gherkin building in London. I drew a picture gave it to some builders and they built it. I will testify on an affidavit to that effect.

I did it. it was me.

Evidence? Erm...I bought some pens for the drawing from a shop. Oh receipt? I don't have one of those. I did put an ad out asking for some blueprint designs to a building so surely that shows I intended to draw it. Where did I get the blueprints in the end? Off some bloke in a pub. He's dead now so he can't verify it, but I swear under oath its all true, every bit of it.

I said I did it, so I did it.

Actually, I lied. I didn't do it.

[Ms Diddles]

Hi Ms. Diddles.

Well, I'll make it brief, so not to derail the thread...

I'm an Indie Rock sort of guy, so it's Belle and Sebastian, The Pastels, Camera Obscura, and Primal Scream.

I draw the line well before the Bay City Rollers, though!

Who am I missing? Any recommendations?

Cheers.

Dropped you a pm!

[John Wheat]

I designed the Gherkin building in London. I drew a picture gave it to some builders and they built it. I will testify on an affidavit to that effect.

I did it. it was me.

Evidence? Erm...I bought some pens for the drawing from a shop. Oh receipt? I don't have one of those. I did put an ad out asking for some blueprint designs to a building so surely that shows I intended to draw it. Where did I get the blueprints in the end? Off some bloke in a pub. He's dead now so he can't verify it, but I swear under oath its all true, every bit of it.

I said I did it, so I did it.

Actually, I lied. I didn't do it.

What are you on about?

[Iconoclast]

What are you on about?

ridiculous

[Iconoclast]

I designed the Gherkin building in London. I drew a picture gave it to some builders and they built it. I will testify on an affidavit to that effect.

I did it. it was me.

Evidence? Erm...I bought some pens for the drawing from a shop. Oh receipt? I don't have one of those. I did put an ad out asking for some blueprint designs to a building so surely that shows I intended to draw it. Where did I get the blueprints in the end? Off some bloke in a pub. He's dead now so he can't verify it, but I swear under oath its all true, every bit of it.

I said I did it, so I did it.

Actually, I lied. I didn't do it.

Oh God, ero b - your last line had me pissing myself!

You didn't mention if you were completely off your tits on Bells at the time, but I imagine you were?

Cheers,

Ike

PS I'm sure everyone who's anyone understood your clever post. Imagine a scenario where you posted with regular hostility regarding the scrapbook and it turned out you didn't know what the **** you were talking about! Shurely shum mishtake?

[John Wheat]

Oh God, ero b - your last line had me pissing myself!

You didn't mention if you were completely off your tits on Bells at the time, but I imagine you were?

Cheers,

Ike

PS I'm sure everyone who's anyone understood your clever post. Imagine a scenario where you posted with regular hostility regarding the scrapbook and it turned out you didn't know what the **** you were talking about! Shurely shum mishtake?

Yes he is clearly talking about Mike Barrett and without knowing it is basically proving my point that Barrett wrote the diary. The idea that Barrett a known conman and published writer didn't write the diary is frankly laughable.

[Iconoclast]

Yes he is clearly talking about Mike Barrett and without knowing it is basically proving my point that Barrett wrote the diary. The idea that Barrett a known conman and published writer didn't write the diary is frankly laughable.

If ero b was "clearly" talking about Mike Barrett, what value to the rest of us was your impertinent post, below?

Originally posted by John Wheat View Post
What are you on about?

Or when you recently posted two rounds of "ridiculous" without any explanation (I trust you understood that mine yesterday was laced with irony?).

You're not the only poster who adopts this destructive invective (and I'm not excluding myself from that pantheon, by the way) and that is a large element in why the Casebook does not make greater progress or acquire a more instructive purpose.

Posts from ero b are generally well-informed and frequently original in content and angle so he deserves a bit of respect for it. Criticise his posts certainly (no-one will ever be above it nor should they be) but be constructive in your criticism, not simply wayward, irrelevant, and thoroughly condescending (again, I do not exclude myself from this comment).

And remember that potentially less-informed readers are absorbing the tone of this place as well as the rhetoric and that they should not be misled by unstructured, ill-researched diatribes (again, self not excluded).

Ike

[Iconoclast]

Okay, so that off my chest, let's unpack what you claimed.

ero b said, very wittily, in my opinion:

I designed the Gherkin building in London. I drew a picture gave it to some builders and they built it. I will testify on an affidavit to that effect.
I did it. it was me.
Evidence? Erm...I bought some pens for the drawing from a shop. Oh receipt? I don't have one of those. I did put an ad out asking for some blueprint designs to a building so surely that shows I intended to draw it. Where did I get the blueprints in the end? Off some bloke in a pub. He's dead now so he can't verify it, but I swear under oath its all true, every bit of it.
I said I did it, so I did it.
Actually, I lied. I didn't do it.

Shades of Aldridge Prior there from ero b who was clearly being tongue-in-cheek whilst making an excellent point (i.e., 'confessing' to something requires evidential support if you really expect to be taken seriously).

You said:

... it is basically proving my point that Barrett wrote the diary. The idea that Barrett a known conman and published writer didn't write the diary is frankly laughable.

So - now that you've made these claims - the burdon of proof falls on you to provide the evidence for them. It's Put Up or Shut Up time. A Make Your Point or Haud Yer Wheesht moment.

So, I don't see how your logic got you to:

1) ... it is basically proving my point that Barrett wrote the diary; and
2) The idea that Barrett a known conman and published writer didn't write the diary is frankly laughable

So what was it about ero b's post that led you to believe that he had actually just confirmed the very point he was using humour to deconstruct?

And how did whatever that was lead you to conclude that Mike Barrett - a serial liar and half-baked conman, with a PhD in Illiteracy - could ever possibly have got as far as the first line of a text which has resisted all efforts to evidentially denounce?

Ideally skipping the usual platitudes about wind-up merchants, biased researchers, people making fortunes, etc. (unless, of course, they are the only 'arguments' you've chosen to believe about the Maybrick candidature).

Ike

[Iconoclast]

Theirs is a faith-based belief, utterly removed from any need for evidence or proof, and, as they see it, it is the task of the critics to shake their faith.
Although Ike denies it, this is the entire schtick of the 'Incontrovertible' thread.

Au contraire, Rodders. For the only time in the history of Ripperology (and - by implication - the life cycle so far of this internet site), we have a candidate for whom we have something called 'evidence' (look it up in a dictionary) to check his (or her or their or 'no one's') candidature.

James Maybrick is not a religion, RJ. He is not the messiah. This is not a faith-based belief in its entirety, which makes all the difference between him and every other candidate who is absolutely faith-based in every respect.

I'm not about to apologise for James Maybrick leaving us with something to actually investigate, nor to supplicate for sympathy from anyone mortal or anything immortal - something I leave to the beggars and the sinners and the Sunderland supporters whose very existence is defined by a poverty of proper beliefs.

Yes, of course, much of the argument about James Maybrick has to enter the realm of 'circumstance' (something others - without any sense of irony whatsoever - would call 'faith'), I accept that, but what you have with Maybrick are two artefacts which place him firmly in the frame for either being Jack (the scrapbook) or at the very least wishing people to think he were Jack (the watch).

I'm not about to re-hash the long arguments in my brilliant Society's Pillar. It's there to read for free. The circumstantial evidence linking James to Jack is huge and utterly compelling, though only because the scrapbook shows how inconceivable (without being actually impossible) it is that it is all a hoax: yes, the careless placing of his wife's initials in Mary Kelly's room and then the crowing about it afterwards in his journal of those terrible crimes.

So - do me a favour - put your pompous 'atheism' back in the box you got it from and wise up to the fact that you are in the pews every Sunday with the rest of us, though some of our gods are more plausible than others.

Blessed be.

Ike

[John Wheat]

If ero b was "clearly" talking about Mike Barrett, what value to the rest of us was your impertinent post, below?



Or when you recently posted two rounds of "ridiculous" without any explanation (I trust you understood that mine yesterday was laced with irony?).

You're not the only poster who adopts this destructive invective (and I'm not excluding myself from that pantheon, by the way) and that is a large element in why the Casebook does not make greater progress or acquire a more instructive purpose.

Posts from ero b are generally well-informed and frequently original in content and angle so he deserves a bit of respect for it. Criticise his posts certainly (no-one will ever be above it nor should they be) but be constructive in your criticism, not simply wayward, irrelevant, and thoroughly condescending (again, I do not exclude myself from this comment).

And remember that potentially less-informed readers are absorbing the tone of this place as well as the rhetoric and that they should not be misled by unstructured, ill-researched diatribes (again, self not excluded).

Ike

Yes but you are not always constructive in your criticism Ike.

[John Wheat]

Okay, so that off my chest, let's unpack what you claimed.

ero b said, very wittily, in my opinion:



Shades of Aldridge Prior there from ero b who was clearly being tongue-in-cheek whilst making an excellent point (i.e., 'confessing' to something requires evidential support if you really expect to be taken seriously).

You said:



So - now that you've made these claims - the burdon of proof falls on you to provide the evidence for them. It's Put Up or Shut Up time. A Make Your Point or Haud Yer Wheesht moment.

So, I don't see how your logic got you to:

1) ... it is basically proving my point that Barrett wrote the diary; and
2) The idea that Barrett a known conman and published writer didn't write the diary is frankly laughable

So what was it about ero b's post that led you to believe that he had actually just confirmed the very point he was using humour to deconstruct?

And how did whatever that was lead you to conclude that Mike Barrett - a serial liar and half-baked conman, with a PhD in Illiteracy - could ever possibly have got as far as the first line of a text which has resisted all efforts to evidentially denounce?

Ideally skipping the usual platitudes about wind-up merchants, biased researchers, people making fortunes, etc. (unless, of course, they are the only 'arguments' you've chosen to believe about the Maybrick candidature).

Ike

Face it Barrett wrote the diary. It's not like it's a literary masterpiece and he was a published writer and also a conman as I said previously.