An important discovery

[GUT]

Too old for the rest of the naughty. I share champagne, just not the PR Churchill. After the aforementioned, was it 33? threads, I do need to speed up the drinking. It's just the head banging hurts in the morning.

The banging head is from reading Pierre's threads not the Champers. good Champagne shouldn't cause a hangover.

[John G]

New Years Resolutions go down the drain!
Pierre will be the reason why many will end up in the AA, next stop might be rehab!

I understand John, getting over Sophie isn't easy, she was a keeper

Ah yes, I was starting to like Sophie! Still wouldn't completely rejecting my earlier theory, but maybe that's just wishful thinking!

[curious4]

"Hello Pierre our old "friend"
You've come to confound us again!
Words that have no reasoning!!
Vague ideas without real seasoning!!
And the words of the Goulston Street graffiti's on the walls,
near Mary's halls
- behind the stairs, of silence." -

with apologies to Paul Simon and Art Garfunkle.

Jeff

Great! I did start one based on Scarborough fair but didn't finish it :-).

Cheers
C4

[nicole]

Hi all,

"Hello Pierre our old "friend"
You've come to confound us again!
Words that have no reasoning!!
Vague ideas without real seasoning!!
And the words of the Goulston Street graffiti's on the walls,
near Mary's halls
- behind the stairs, of silence." -

with apologies to Paul Simon and Art Garfunkle.

So Good! I'm gonna attempt one...to Don MacLeans "Vincent". It's just too tempting......

Nicole

[nicole]

Hi all,

Here goes....to Don MacLeans Vincent (Starry Starry Night)

"Silly, Silly Boy!.........
Post your nonsense night and day.....
We all wished you'd go away.....
But Santa didn't give us what we want.

We'll just have to wait.....
Bide our time and bite our tongues.....
We'll count from 10 back down to one.....
Administration soon will see out plight.

No-one understands...what you're tryin' to say to them...
The data never seen the light.....
Admin will make it right.....

You did not listen, you did not know how.....
Perhaps you'll listen now?"

Nicole

[curious4]

Perhaps we should move our poetic efforts to Creative Writing. I can recommend Pierre-related doggerel to cope with the frustration and irritation he generates.

Best wishes
C4

[Elamarna]

Nicole,

love the "vincent/Pierre"

curious4,

where would you suggest we post such ditties?

Steve

[curious4]

Nicole,

love the "vincent/Pierre"

curious4,

where would you suggest we post such ditties?

Steve

Creative Writings. :-D

C4

[Elamarna]

found it

[Mayerling]

Returning to "Vincent" by McLean:

"For we could not stand you.
Your new threads false - they made us rue,
and hope that on a starry night,
you might disappear from sight,
and take your fake ideas away with you!
We could have told you Pierre,
nobody else is as tedious as you!

Scientific crap,
Paint your canvas black/dark blue
Make stairs disappear from view,
And make us read "Queen Mary" -
oh the pain!!!

Letters from the blue -
Fleet street hacks grasped for their "truth"
Coffins in small rooms - forsooth!
It all adds up to just a mess again!!

We will never care - what you tried to force us to
swallow in this swill, this brew.
To make us wiser: closer to academe -
YOU MAKE US WANT TO SCREAM!!!

[Rosemary]

Puppet Masters

There are people who delight in pulling strings. They delight in the dance of manipulation. I can make voodoo dolls & poppets, but, to my not endless regret, I'm in the throes of existentialist dread. Needs must: chocolate, bananas, & champagne, in no particular order, at any ordinary time, & it's past happy hour in Barcelona. If I add pecans to the chocolate, & caramel, I can make turtles of the confectionery kind for Abby, who likes turtles. And non sequiturs work beautifully, they does.

After a half-assed reply to the probability statistics question, I've lost all patience & tolerance & humor for innuendo, misdirection & outright nutsballery. Perhaps I'll go read Smith's 'The Wealth of Nations' again. It's been a long time.

[JadenCollins]

This song; http://youtu.be/bHNczNvOnGc
Should be background music for every thread Pierre posts!

[kookingpot]

I think there are a couple things we can learn from this thread.

1. Confirmation bias is real. I think we all can learn from this that it's easy to be blinded when a piece of evidence fits in with our preconceived notions. Let's take this lesson to heart, and critically evaluate all of our own evidence before we work it into the theory.

2. Pierre is not an academic historian. I have alleged this in other posts on other threads recently, and am further convinced. He may have a background in sociology, but not in history. He is making too many elementary mistakes regarding source criticism, lack of background research, and methodology. All of these are elementary things you learn early on in graduate school in any remotely history-related field. Sociology is not one of those fields.

[John G]

I think there are a couple things we can learn from this thread.

1. Confirmation bias is real. I think we all can learn from this that it's easy to be blinded when a piece of evidence fits in with our preconceived notions. Let's take this lesson to heart, and critically evaluate all of our own evidence before we work it into the theory.

2. Pierre is not an academic historian. I have alleged this in other posts on other threads recently, and am further convinced. He may have a background in sociology, but not in history. He is making too many elementary mistakes regarding source criticism, lack of background research, and methodology. All of these are elementary things you learn early on in graduate school in any remotely history-related field. Sociology is not one of those fields.

Excellent post. I certainly don't think he's an academic. I have asked him on numerous occasions to refer me to academic texts that he's had published, i.e. peer-reviewed journal articles, but he's so far ignored my posts.

I also wonder if he could have a background in statistics, although he denies being an IT statistician. Of course, there could be connected to an academic institution, but that raises many possibilities. He could, for instance, be an undergraduate, part-time tutor, or even a support worker, i .e. IT specialist , librarian, library assistant. And is "Pierre" one person, or a group of people?

[SirJohnFalstaff]

There was a very interesting exercise about confirmation bias in the New York Times recently.

Made me think

They put a series of numbers, and people had to find out the "applicable rule".
The numbers were 3, 6, 12.

After that, people had to make other series of numbers, and the webpage would validate or invalidate, if it worked or not.
So, of course, most people, me included, went.
2, 4, 8. It was validated.
then
5, 10, 20. Validated again.
People had to write the hypothesis down after.
Most people, and me again, wrote: each number is the double of the one preceding it.

Wrong.

The rule was simply "each number has to be higher than the one preceding it"
So, if I had written
3, 4, 79. It would have been validated.

A real eye opener in my case.