Intergalactic Summit

Oh, and to touch on your attempted obfuscation about Makoto and I being the same person because we've both thrown your successive claims of 'I don't read it when you get wordy' and 'I read all of it' even though we obviously got totally wordy back in your face as 'these statements are mutually exclusive' evidence of your being a deceitful twit.

I appreciate that you're trying to use that accusation to derail similar suspicions about you and Mr. I Can Make An Authoritative Claim About Angels And Then Totally Refuse To Demonstrate Any Actual Knowledge On The Topic When Challenged, but a)you'll note that one of the significant points being offered about the possibility that two of you are close associates is that you have very similar patterns of language use. Not just 'OMG, you totally have the same word count in your posts!' In fact, nothing of that sort, but actual analysis of your methods of self-description, your constructions of sentences, your tendencies toward certain patterns of punctuation, etc.

Now, I personally have not made that claim. I don't know if you're associates. I don't care. Actually, I kind hope you're not, because while whasisface the Angel Guy leaves himself open a lot, he seems to do it sincerely, and I can respect his sincerity. You, on the other hand, have repeatedly proven yourself to be... what was that term again? Oh yes, a deceitful twit. You deceitful twit.

For example: by using this particular claim in your attempted obfuscation, you're relying entirely on the fact that Makoto and I use more words than you do in an average post. You say this as if it demonstrates a similar tendency in our average posting length. However, it ignores the actual relative length of our posts when compared to one another. And I say this because, well, Makoto is positively brief, you little turdblossom.

Moreover, the two of us don't use language in anything even vaguely resembling a similar manner. Makoto's language tends to be a bit circumspect, a bit reserved, and generally polite. Now, I dunno if you've noticed this, twit, but 'polite' isn't exactly something I'm generally accused of being, especially not when dealing with a deceitful little twit. Which, you know, is precisely what I'm dealing with right now.

I generally don't find myself to be at all circumspect in my opinions, either. In fact, I'd really tend to describe my style of expressing myself as more 'blunt-force trauma'. I do tend to be a little more self-analytical in my presentation than Makoto, though. I haven't exactly noticed, for example, any tendency in her postings to tangent off into a brief bought of self-examination or otherwise speculation on her own tendencies—except, of course, for when things like her own arrogance were directly raised as a conversation topic. But of course, then she's really more addressing a statement made by someone else, and not diverting off into introspective self-examination, now is she?

Also, you'll note the punctuation tendencies issue was raised. Makoto's fond of hyphens, when she uses anything like that. I'm more of a fan of proper em-dash usage but you might have freaking gotten that from my first post in this entire thread, you deceitful twit. Of course, that would assume you read, which you've claimed you don't. So I'd normally be inclined to write that one off as 'well, I guess he missed it', except for the fact that we've pretty solidly established that I find you to be a deceityful twit.

Which brings us to another demonstrable indicator that Makoto and I aren't the same individual: I'm far more given to expressing segments of inner monologue during my tangents of self-examination than Makoto is, even when the topic of conversation is her personality traits, resulting in her own brief bouts of public self-examination.

But back to the punctuation and grammar thing: really, there's absolutely no comparison between the way the two of us use language. That you settle on verbosity, and then blatantly, flagrantly manage to equate Makoto's capacity to expand on her points and my unmitigated glee in being able to express myself at maddening length over the smallest and most trivial of matters is clearly evidence of one of two things: either a)you're a complete moron, or b)you're simply a deceitful twit.

I'd say I'll leave it up to you to determine which one I think is more likely, but I have to admit that at this point, in order for you to think that I believe you to be a complete moron... you'd have to actually be a complete moron. I mean, really, I think by now, pretty much anyone out there knows that I consider you a deceitful twit, and so there really shouldn't be any question. The answer, of course, is 'deceitful twit'.

So, to recap: You're a deceitful twit. You make blatantly self-contradictory claims, and then when you're called on it, you attempt to weasel out of that fact by acting like it was all a thetorical tactic. The problem there, of course, is that when utilizing a rhetorical tactic, one must actually employ rhetoric, which you've proven again and again you're simply unwilling on incapable of doing. Which means that when you claim to have been doing so, it's a pretty naked attempt at deceit, twit.

And when called on these further attempts at deceit, you try to throw up misdirection and nonsense claims about writing style and idenficiation based on the use of language that really, a blind and illiterate fedo would be able to demolish in a debate. It would be sad if it weren't entirely predictable. No, wait, I'm wrong. It's entirely predictable, yeah, but it's still sad. Not that I expect you to stop any time soon. It seems to be about the limit of your twit-like mental abilities.

Except, of course, that it's unfair and inaccurate of me to describe your mental abilities as 'twit-like'. It insults twit-like people who aren't twits. You deceitful twit.

You clearly missed the 'gleeful' part, you deceitful twit. I amuse myself. That's really all I need out of this.

Reading the 'deceitful twit' speech post does feel like having a sledgehammer introduced to my cranium.

I meant a sudden sensation of a very sore head, followed by tinnitus and disorientation.

Does she not get that he seems to be winning to some of us?

Did you not get the part where I pretty clearly said I'm amusing myself and don't give a damn about the opinions of more than maybe half a dozen people in this cluster? I mean, if you didn't, I'd be happy to explain exactly what I mean. At length.

... uh ... I think I'll just class that under "an opinion someone had," Mr. Jan.


Maybe. He has a pretty specific idea of how he thinks a soul interacts with human life and cloning rigs, though.

My own beliefs about the soul are a little different. My sect teaches that the soul is, very simply, who you are, in the very broadest possible sense, everything you've been, seen, done: the lives you've touched and the way you've touched them; the things that are a little different because of you, for good or ill. Children taught. People killed. Footprints left. Every sprout planted or stepped on.

To us, your soul is who you are in the Totality-- your self, all that you've ever been, echoing through the universe. As you might guess, I don't think of it as something a burn scanner can do a lot of damage to. ... unless it means making sure someone remains in this world longer than they maybe should have, long enough to do a lot of harm in it.

So, yeah. To me, what would poison and blacken my soul is the thing, whatever it might be, that would make me a harmful person, more than I already am.

Killing seems mostly to lead to more killing, more people taken out of the world. It's maybe a necessary role, and I can't pretend I didn't kind of know what I was getting into, but ...

Fear for my soul, to me, isn't about Paradise, the Abyss, or Hell-- no spirit world at all. I don't believe in such places, but I don't want my mark on the world to be all black and red. Even if that's kind of who I am.

So, even if I can't help but be an inky little shadow, I cling to the brightest source of light I can find, and link my fate with hers.

> Clearly the author intended his essay to raise more questions than provide answers.

It is indeed pure conjecture based on my beliefs and observations. The fact that the Jove with their superior science were unable to identify the cause of their affliction suggests to me that there isn't a conventional cause for the disease. I'm looking for potential links to anything that might have been outside the Jovian ken and ancient wisdom on the nature of the soul is one such jumping off point.

The parallels between the Jovian disease and the behavior of implanted humans over a period of time shouldn't be lightly dismissed, even if there are presently very visible examples of capsuleers that appear unaffected - Cloning is still a very new technology for us and we know that certain Jovians were able to resist their illness much longer than others before succumbing. Who is to say that we're not heading in the same direction?

I wouldn't say I'm pessimistic though (and hopefully I'm wrong, for simply selfish reasons!), just pointing out a strange coincidence that I believe bears more investigation from those brighter and more scientifically inclined than me.

You just hit on the key to life. If a race gives up on sex they falter and whither away. Clearly sex is the key to a race's survival, both physically and spiritually.

I *knew* those Amarrian orgies were a good idea. It's for the good of humanity.

The really interesting question about the Jovian disease is: since they obviously knew that, why didn't they just revert the last few rounds of changes to get back to 'gonads' instead of 'stopnads'? Did they realy just all up and decide to emo-to-oblivion so hard they just couldn't muster the energy to undo their nonsense?