Since this seems to be the time for farewells, here's another one.

The timing is actually coincidental, though.

I'm leaving off posting because my name here has finally been cleared in a variety of ways, so there is no longer any principle at stake.

In addition to which, a lot of folks have got it wrong. It's not the oddballs like O'Connell who are screwing the place up, nor the right-wingers working out their deep fears of life.

Such as they can always be tolerated at a place like this.

It's the regulars blathering their opinions over and over again with not a shred of new insight, new local color, new anything.

And in the process, aiding and abetting the so-called "MSM" whose sole task is to trivialize US politics to the point where no serious discussion is any longer possible.

Do yourselves a favor, folks. Get out into your "nabes" and keep your ears to the ground. Actually eavesdrop and find out what's going down in your neck of the woods. Then come back and tell us what you've heard, and then, what you think about what you've heard.

You're all bright folks and I'm sure that if you took a moment to reflect on what you've observed in your own personal spheres, you could all contribute a lot to US political discourse.

But as it stands now, the Fray is like a Hardball or CountDown or Anderson panel, just multiplied from three or four people offering nothing to several dozen people offering nothing.

Since I'm gonna stop posting but not stop reading here, I hope that some of you out there will take this suggestion seriously.

Bring something to the table, fer crissakes.

You're very annoying.

And so are your nics. Please take them with you.

And we'll see you again (I'm sure) when you get around to posting. Hopefully, your sabatical is more extended this time.

And give O'Connell a swift kick for me while you're at it.

forget Maui, ever.

Cheers

can express our sad bewilderment at the prospect of your absence here:

"Nairobi Blues"

"Stop all the threads, cut off the search engine,
Prevent the troll from rooting in the bargain bin,
Silence the morons and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let clique members gather, kvetching ever on,
Pretending not to care, or notice--He is Gone.
Put blue checks round the white necks of the Poems Fray doves,
Let the Fray editors wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought his work would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the Ghost and deactivate Run,
Wipe away the archives and sweep up the spam;
For nothing now can be worth a damn."

The above was used with such piquancy in the Fray tragicomedy, "Four Flushings and a Farewell". Or was it "Four Farewells and a Lecture"?

That was great. Too bad Geoff isn't around, to weep over it.

another Nic change.

Jack

Is it ender again?...

The style quirks are unmistakeable....howveer his advice is not without merit. When all is finally said and done we may look back on Ender as one the Fray's greatest.

Parting is such sweet sorrow.

Or... This is one of the three great lies of the Fray?

Nose in the air, back of wrist on forehead and dramatically stating "I'll never post here again".

Either way, goodby.

as a poster, but he and the editorial staff are like overburdened social workers who come by every Thursday afternoon to check up on things.

Who ever he is, the guy puts a lot of time and effort into The Fray and is very, very smart.

Scary.

This is ciinc. Nairobi, O'Connell--they're ciinc too.

And ciinc isn't Ender. . .unless I missed that connection.

How many times did Ender rewrite his own dramatic closing monolog? I seem to recall the number 14 floating around at one point. Dave's only up to 3 or 4, I think. O'Connell isn't ci inc, btw. That's a whole nother level of crazy from anything we've seen on these pages before. The guy needs real help.

Pseudo-smarts is a method. I'll show you.

You simply gather together a bag of items you know to be true. In a science pseudo-smarts way we can gather together things like F=ma, Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation, Maxwell's Equations, and a bunch of other stuff you got in freshman physics class.

Now, even if you remember the connections, even if you can go from the force in Newtons 2nd Law (F=ma) to the force in Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation (F=GMm/R^2) or the force in Coulomb's Law (F=eEe'/R^2) the important thing is you don't assume those connections! In other words, you don't yet want to make any sense of the bits and pieces you know!

Now that you have your bag of stuff (which doesn't make sense yet) you draw connections in a brand new way that goes against what you know to be true and soon you've cobbled together a new geometry, a conspiracy theory on hijacked tympanums, or a new treatise on how bowling balls roll uphill.

You see? It's not the facts that make you sound smart. It's the new connections (look up gravitoelectromagnetism (GEM) in Wikipedia. Look up Martin Tajmar. GEM may very well exist but not in the way I described it).

Try it sometime. Do an experiment. Whatever your field of expertise is look back into and review what you know to be true. Rearrange your knowledge and draw different connections between those items you know. Then post.

I think you'll be surprised at how brilliant you sound while knowing what you just posted is total bull. This is how we get rockets rising on low grade hurricanes and red skies from molecules "on top of each other."

This is his method.